After becoming the first movie to top $1 billion at the box office, Titanic may go down (no pun intended) as the most-acclaimed movie in history. It has received a record-tying 14 Academy Award nominations. While some of the nominations should have been expected, others come as a surprise, especially the one for Best Picture. A film with a predictable plot and trite dialogue should not be ranked as one of the top five movies of 1997.

Just like anyone else, I enjoy simple romantic tales of forbidden love. But such movies have their place--far below the stage on which the Academy Awards are given. When I left Titanic,I rubbed my teary eyes and did not think about it again until I wrote this article, I did not need to think about it-- I had seen it all done before.

The plot is painfully obvious. We know everything that will happen 15 minutes before it does. Granted, this may be excusable--in a film about the Titanic, we know the ship has to sink and that almost everybody will die. Nevertheless, the dialogue did not need to be so banal. At times, I found myself mouthing lines along with the characters.

The poor dialogue stems directly from poor character development; Cameron's most amazing feat in making Titanic was that he could not find the time to create any three-dimensional characters in such a long film. None of the characters break through their stereotypes. Leonardo DiCaprio is the street-savvy pauper who attracts Kate Winslet with his wit, good looks and carefree lifestyle. Winslet is the helpless rich girl who feels trapped by the rigid conformity of her class that seem to govern her entire life. Their love is a for-bidden one since she has already been betrothed to a man she does not love.

Winslet's mother is a greedy social climber who revels in the obnoxious snobbery of Winslet's finance and his friends. The old-wealth aristocrats look down upon Kathy Bates, the crass, straight-shooting caricature of the nouveau riche. Of course, Cameron also makes bland references to the injustice of class oppression. Several back-to-back shots reveal that the ship's wealthy patrons are only able to enjoy its luxuries because of the sweat of the poor workers laboring below deck.

Cameron used cliched plot devices for good reason. He spent $200 million on scenery, so he needed to market the film for a mass audience-originality is a risk he could not afford to take. By writing a simple lobe story with a beautiful backdrop, he knew he could turn Titanic into a money machine.

Cameron has reaped fiscal rewards for his decision, and he need not be further rewarded. The other films nominated for best picture-- L.A. Confidential, Full Monty, Good Will Hunting and As Good as It Gets-- all contain creative plots, three- dimensional characters and witty dialogue. Fresh characters with fresh personalities drive their films.

Hopefully,Titanic will be this year's Jerry Maguire, the blockbuster nominated for Best Picture to appease executives at the major studios. If it does win, it will be an unfortunate loss for us all.

Movies such as L.A. Confidential and Good will Hunting make Hollywood better by putting new plot twists onto the list of money-making ideas. To encourage writers to continue producing original works, the Academy Awards should honor those who dare to be different. If we reward the banality of films like Titanic with such high distinction, writers will have no reason to deviate from tried-and-true themes. The current trend in movie-making--spending millions of dollars on explosions and scenery to obscure trite plots--will continue to dominate the silver screen.

These films keep us entertained while we watch them, but we leave them behind along with our $5 bags of popcorn after we exit the theater. Only truly original films capture our minds because they expose us to situations and personalities which we have not yet encountered. They cause us to question how we would have acted if in the same position as the characters. They cause us to remember lines that are especially witty or poignant. And sometimes, they add to our understanding of the subject matter they address. After leaving Titanic, my only thought was how Cameron made a computer-generated image look so much like a real iceberg.

Titanic is a very entertaining film. The cinematography is beautiful, the characters are good-looking and DiCaprio and Winslet have good chemistry. The film is a nice romance with $200 million worth of scenery, and I am glad that I spent my $7.75 on it. If you have not seen it (i.e. you are an astronaut just returning to earth or a senior working on your thesis) it is a spectacle worth viewing on the big screen.

When the Academy announces this year's winners, I hope Cameron's epic wins its fair share of awards in cinematography and costume. The film clearly excelled in those areas. But it was not the year's best picture, and the Academy would strike a blow to imaginative filmmakers everywhere by honoring it as such.

Alex M. Carter '00, a history and literature concentrator in Dunster House, is The Crimson's resident Moviegoer.