Eight decades or so later, technology has taken a few new hubristic turns. In scenes reminiscent of his The Abyss, only much eerier, Cameron shows real-life footage of insect-like deep-sea submersibles probing the ship's crusty hull as it lies in state on the ocean floor. The research crew headed by Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton) are not altogether altruistic in their scientific ideals, however -- they're looking for "The Heart of the Sea," a peerless diamond they've learned was on board when the Titanic sank.

They don't find the diamond, but they do recover a nude sketch of a beautiful woman, and soon thereafter the woman herself turns up, Rose Calvert (Gloria Stuart), 101 years old and with a tale to tell. In a compelling transition (and a technique perhaps overused throughout the movie), Rose watches a video of the ship's hoary and derelict ballroom door filmed by Lovett's cameras, her aged face reflected in the monitor screen. The door springs to life as it was 84 years ago, opening to music and gaiety, and then is gone. The search for a diamond, the epitome of inanimate beauty, leads to a frail bit of art and the woman who inspired it. And just as a miracle of technology almost cost Rose her life back in 1912, so now a miracle of technology brings her memory of the Titanic to life.

It's an impressive conceit, and representative of the poetic intelligence that keeps the film afloat. The story Rose tells, though, is not so extraordinary. She starts out as spoiled and desperate 17-year-old American socialite Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet in a career-making performance) whose mother, Ruth (Frances Fisher), a dowager facing ruin, is marrying her off to a millionaire's son, the impossibly villainous Cal Hockley (Billy Zane, who just wishes he had mustachios to curl and a railroad track to tie poor Rose to). Cal's engagement gift to Rose is the "Heart of the Sea" and a trip on the Titanic to their wedding in America. Meanwhile, plucky young American Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio), an impoverished, itinerant artist, has won steerage passage on the ship in a poker game. The free-spirited Jack and the gilded-caged Rose meet on board, and so on.

It's a standard story given a Jamesian depth with its (sometimes simplistic) subtext of money, class, power, and sexual repression. Winslet brings delightful depth and range to her role, overcoming its lapses in development -- only her capricious sensuality and spontaneity makes Rose's sudden decision to pose nude for Jack believable. DiCaprio, for his part, has trouble rising above the cute-boy snottiness that tends to be his stock in trade. He does so, however, in a scene where he's fitted in his first tuxedo, which is given to him by the understanding vulgarian Molly Brown (Kathy Bates). He fills the outfit nicely, and at a dinner with Cal and Ruth and their supercilious retinue, he responds to their insults with wry wit, dignity, and panache.

But all the sexual intrigue and the chases and the gunfire and the passion submerge below the great disaster of which they are only vivid reflections. In a scene reminiscent of the death throes of King Kong, the ship goes down. It's not a roller-coaster ride. Like Cameron's best work, Titanic shows that the fascination with such technological wonders as the White Star liner and this movie itself is a fascination with the inanimate, with death. The film's long final phase is a harrowing series of sublime images of death and those about to die. It will fill your dreams, as it did mine, with the terror and release of drowning, of the dread of what iceberg lies in the path of the vain vessel of our lives and our civilization.