Titanic: 100 Years in 3D Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Titanic: 100 Years in 3D Blu-ray Movie Review

Neptune is king of this world.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 12, 2012

One of the coolest things in the wacky splendor that is Las Vegas, Nevada is in the dusty black pyramid called Luxor. Housed upstairs, sandwiched in between the Bodies exhibit and the exciting food court is an amazing mini-museum devoted to the Titanic. Filled with actual relics pulled off of the ocean floor which were once either part of the ship itself or which belonged to one of the passengers, doomed or otherwise, the Titanic exhibit is at once fascinating and disturbing. By far the most astounding display is a huge chunk of the actual ship which is called The Big Piece. This mind bogglingly large slab of heavily riveted metal hangs suspended in a huge room and contains several portholes, one of which still contains shattered glass. What is so amazing about this so-called Big Piece is that next to it is a schematic of the ship which shows where this steel jigsaw remnant actually fit on the ship, and when looking at the complete diagram of the ship, you suddenly realize how relatively miniscule this “Big Piece” is when compared to the immensity that was the Titanic. The tragedy of the Titanic grabbed hold of the public’s consciousness the day the sinking was reported and really has rarely let go ever since. It may have been somewhat in “remission” when Robert Ballard stumbled upon the site of the wreck in 1985. Since Ballard’s initial discovery, interest in the Titanic has only blossomed to heretofore unimagined levels, levels that were thrust into the stratosphere when James Cameron’s feature film about the tragedy became a worldwide phenomenon in 1997. The recent uptick in 3D technology allowed Cameron to re-release his unbelievably successful film in that new format, a release which was another major box office sensation, helping to usher in a year of remembrance about the fateful ocean liner 100 years after its sinking. Now The History Channel has joined the 3D fray with a fascinating, if pretty brief, 3D excursion into the remnants of the ship lying miles beneath the roiling surface of the frigid North Atlantic waters.

It’s a little surprising how little time is spent in Titanic: 100 Years in 3D on the actual technology involved to capture the astounding images on display in the special, as one would assume that getting 3D cameras two-plus miles down into the ocean would be something of an accomplishment. Instead, though, there’s a quick look at the motorized submergibles without a lot of tech-speak. In a way, the brief press sheet accompanying this release is more informative with regard to the background of this expedition, clarifying that this was a 2010 outing by the now legendary Woods Hold Oceanographic Institute, which sought to document the entire wreck of the Titanic using high resolution optical video, sonar, acoustic imaging and 3D HD video and acoustic modeling.

Titanic: 100 Years in 3D takes a perhaps more understandable “up close and personal” approach which highlights the stories of several people aboard the doomed liner. While this gives a visceral aspect to the special, the fact this History Channel piece runs barely 45 minutes means that no story is really explored very thoroughly. There are glancing overviews of some of the more notable people aboard the Titanic, like Captain Edward Smith, with an ironic voiceover (all of the “characters” are voiced by actors) stating that he’s never run into much trouble at sea. There’s also a brief homage to one of the passengers whose occupation provides an interesting olfactory aspect to the Luxor Titanic exhibit, one Adolphe Saalfeld, a chemist who boarded the Titanic with dreams of becoming a perfumer in the promised land of the United States. Saalfeld actually survived the sinking but his sample case of scents was thought lost forever until one of the Woods Hole expeditions to the wreck site managed to bring it up, with many vials still completely intact. The Luxor exhibit features many of these housed in a case with holes in the side so that visitors can actually bend down and get a (faint) whiff of the aromas. The ever industrious marketers who are behind Titanic-mania have also manufactured some new “Titanic perfumes” based on Saalfeld’s formulations.

A couple of the stories imparted in Titanic: 100 Years in 3D are probably well known to Titanic aficionados, but were a surprise to me. One of these concerned a sort of sidebar to the issue of crewmen carrying guns, guns which were used to keep the crowds from overtaking the last few lifeboats that were available as it became clear that the Titanic itself was not going to remain afloat much longer. I personally had no idea that one crewmen evidently actually shot two passengers dead before killing himself. There’s a really interesting little segment here looking at one crewman who has been accused of being the culprit, with forensic evidence from the wreck involving the huge davits that hoisted the lifeboats up over the side of the Titanic and then down into the water.

There are the usual requisite talking heads segments, per most History Channel offerings, but in this case they’re unusually informative and interesting, featuring a handful of Titanic experts and aficionados. By far the most compelling of these features Alexandra Klingelhofer, Curator and Vice President of Collections for Premier Exhibitions and RMS Titanic, Inc. Ms. Klingelhofer is shown curating a couple of items found in the wreck and discusses how some items managed to survive. One of the most amazing things from the Luxor exhibit (which Ms. Klingelhofer evidently also curated) is seeing how various items weathered not just the crash but the decades on the ocean floor. Incredibly fragile items like plates, cups and dishes escaped unscathed (one especially incredible exhibit features a set of dishes that remained intact in neat little rows, as the case in which they had originally been in decayed through the years and the plates just settled into the ocean sand). There are beautiful pieces of jewelry, hairbrushes, and perhaps most incredibly, paper items like postcards, letters and (especially moving for me in my guise as a musician), a handwritten “lead sheet” that one of the Titanic band members used to play a song. There’s a strange, bitter irony to the fact that this devastating accident claimed so many human lives but left so much other material virtually unharmed.

Titanic: 100 Years in 3D Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Titanic: 100 Years in 3D is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of A&E Home Video with both the 2D and 3D presentations housed on the same disc. The 2D offering is presented via an AVC encode and the 3D outing is MVC encoded in 1080p and 1.78:1. The image here is decently sharp, though detail is hampered by the very fact that so much of the footage is underwater. Though high intensity lamps were used to illuminate the wreck, there's still some general murkiness which prevents fine detail from really popping and which keeps dimensionality in the 3D presentation within certain bounds. That said, there is incredible depth to the underwater presentation when the camera moves over items aimed up toward the viewer (like the lifeboat davits which are part of the "shooting" scenario described above in the main body of the review). The one really great 3D presentation, and one which initially threw me for a bit of a loop, are the little bits of dirt which are floating in the water. These are often presented very far forward in the viewing field and the first few times I saw them, I actually thought they were dust mites in my own room floating in front of the screen! The talking heads segments are a bit more conservative in their dimensional aspect, though there's a bit of depth of field with regard to the White Star flag hanging in back of some of the speakers. Some of the still photographs have been effectively rotoscoped as well, with vastly increased dimensionality the result. Colors are decently robust throughout the special.

Titanic: 100 Years in 3D Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Audophiles may be up in arms that Titanic: 100 Years in 3D only offers a standard Dolby Digital 5.1 mix, but the fact is the track gets the job done in an appealing enough manner. Most of the surround activity comes courtesy of the recreations of various incidents on board, as well as some of the underwater footage which offers occasional gurgles and the like placed in discrete channels. Fidelity is fine and the talking heads segments of course sound very good. There's not much to write home about with regard to the mix here, but since the emphasis is probably going to be on the visuals anyway, there shouldn't be too much to complain about.

Titanic: 100 Years in 3D Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Other than offering both the 2D and 3D versions of the special (which are accessed automatically once your display format is recognized), there are no supplements on the disc.

Titanic: 100 Years in 3D Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Titanic: 100 Years in 3D is an often fascinating documentary, but it's also hampered by being too short and over generalized and by the fact that so much of its 3D imagery is of course underwater where general murkiness and shallowness of field work against a true "wow" dimensional experience. Still, the special offers some very compelling stories (albeit told very quickly) about several people on the liner, and the talking heads segments are unusually well done. Considering how difficult it must have been to capture this imagery at all, the special deserves kudos for even offering this much content. Given appropriate expectations, most Titanic-philes will probably enjoy this small scale documentary very much. Recommended.