Titanic is full of little details that add to the tragic love story of Rose and Jack, and there’s one that shows Rose got the life she wanted with Jack, though not exactly as she planned it. Throughout his career as a filmmaker, James Cameron has explored a variety of genres, such as horror with his directorial debut Piranha II: The Spawning, sci-fi with The Terminator, action-comedy with True Lies, and more. Cameron’s name is now mostly associated with big-budget productions thanks to Avatar, but in 1997, he brought his first, big-budget project to life, which helped him become one of the most respected names in the film industry: Titanic.
Released in 1997, Titanic is an epic romance and disaster film based on the accounts of the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912. It tells the story of Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) and Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio), two passengers from different social classes who fall in love aboard the ship during its ill-fated maiden voyage. Over the course of just four days, Rose and Jack meet and fall in love, and they share some of their deepest fears and dreams, making their connection even deeper. Unfortunately, Rose and Jack’s relationship wasn’t meant to be, and though they stay together through the ship’s sinking and do their best to survive in the cold water of the ocean, Jack doesn’t make it and becomes one of the many passengers who die when the Titanic sinks.
Titanic is told through Rose’s perspective, who shares her story with Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton), his team, and her granddaughter Lizzy Calvert (Suzy Amis) as they visit the remains of the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean. By the end of Titanic, Rose gets rid of the diamond necklace known as the Heart of the Ocean, which is what Lovett and his team were looking for, and after dropping it into the sea, she returns to her room and seemingly dies in her sleep, reuniting with Jack and the rest of the passengers in the “afterlife”. Before that emotional reunion, however, as Rose is in her bed, the camera pans over photos of a young Rose that depict her life of freedom and adventure after the sinking of the Titanic, and they reveal that she did everything she planned to do with Jack at some point.
When Jack and Rose are walking around the first-class area of the Titanic, sharing their backstories and dreams, Rose mentions she would love to be free like Jack. Rose tells him to imagine they went to the Santa Monica pier, where Jack used to make portraits for a living, even if “they just talk about it”, with Jack saying they will and they will drink cheap beer, ride the roller coaster until they throw up, and ride horses on the beach, but she had to do it “like a real cowboy, none of that side-saddle stuff”. The photos at the end of Titanic show Rose riding a horse on the beach, with the pier and the roller coaster in the background (and she’s riding like a cowboy). Other photos show her fishing, as a reference to ice-fishing, mentioned by Jack when they first met; Rose next to a plane, which some have interpreted to be a reference to Rose and Jack’s song, “Come Josephine in My Flying Machine”; and photos from her days as an actress, as in a deleted scene, Rose shared with Jack her desires to be something else than “a delicate flower”, and that she could be an actress.
The scene showing Rose’s photos is interpreted as Rose finally breaking free from her family and society’s expectations, but it also shows that she was able to do everything she planned to do with Jack, which in a way, would be like keeping his memory alive. Even though everyone knows what happens to the Titanic, the movie has a lot of little details that elevate Rose and Jack’s story, which didn’t really end when Jack died.
