Lucy’s review published on Letterboxd:
this morning right before i woke up, i had a dream right at the edge of consciousness. all it involved was me remembering and thinking about the movie titanic and saying to myself "mom and i haven't watched this in a while. we should rewatch it together soon." it wasn't until i woke up that i realized that my mom passed away 2 years ago.
titanic is, by far, the most nostalgic movie for me. it's 100% pure concentrated nostalgia. every line of dialogue and sound effect and song is burned into my brain, recalling the 50+ times i used to watch it with my mom when i was really young. she was big on movies, especially rewatching them. she rewatched her favorite movies hundreds of times, never tiring of them. she'd invite my brother and i to watch them with her whenever we were interested, no matter how young we were. she was the one who introduced me to kill bill volume 1 when i was only 10 years old and i fell in love with it. there were others we'd start to watch again and again together: selena, signs, girl interrupted, simon birch. dozens of them. she wasn't always great at spending time with me, telling me to watch tv in a different room while she watched her own tv, so movies were an easy common ground. titanic was one of the earliest and by far the biggest deal of any of the movies we watched, and that's saying something because we used to make tin hats out of aluminum foil when we watched signs.
she had the double vhs tapes, the ones i just rewatched. she'd pack them in our bags when we'd go to a chicago children's hospital hours and hours away from home so i could have surgery. she'd start the first tape every night as we settled down in the hospital room, the nurses coming in every once in a while to check on me and glancing at the tv. "oh! titanic!" they'd say. my mom liked the volume loud. she didn't stop it or turn it down if i fell asleep, and i started to fall asleep almost immediately after it began. so the audio pierced through my dreams many times as i slept, and now it's like an echo in my head whenever i watch it.
this isn't a review as much as a memory i wanted to write out and might as well share, for anyone who cares. titanic is a great movie, but it doesn't matter to me how great it is, because it'll always be one of the purest ways i was connected to my mom. i probably haven't seen it since 2012 when we went to the theater together for the re-release. after she passed, i thought i might not be able to watch it for years, and maybe never again. but here i am. sometimes all you need is to carve out 4 hours to rewatch titanic and have a good cry. or at least i do.