Despite being released over 27 years ago, Titanic remains a cinematic masterpiece. The film tells the tale of Jack and Rose, portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, aboard the ill-fated Titanic.
One of the most iconic scenes, which continues to spark debate in the film industry, shows Jack and Rose swimming in the freezing water after jumping from the sinking ship. They find a makeshift raft in the form of a door, which Rose climbs onto, leaving Jack to perish in the icy water.
This scene has been the subject of much discussion, with fans debating whether Jack could have fit on the door alongside Rose, potentially saving his life. 27 years after the release of the film, Leonardo DiCaprio weighed in on the scene’s controversy during an interview.
In a chat with All the Right Movies, Leonardo, along with his ‘Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood’ co-stars Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie, was asked about the infamous ending of Titanic.
“Okay, biggest movie controversy of all time,” the interviewer began before posing his question. “Could Jack have fit on that door at the end of Titanic?”
“Oh my god,” Margot immediately responded. “I remember bawling my eyes out when I was a girl.”
When asked for his thoughts, Leonardo simply smiled and said: “I have no comment.”
“That is telling I think,” the interviewer remarked, sparking Margot Robbie’s swift concurrence: “That is the biggest controversy in modern cinema.”
Brad Pitt then turned to his fellow actor Leonardo DiCaprio and probed: “When would you [comment on it]?” to which DiCaprio promptly asserted: “I have no comment.”
His stance remained unshakeable as the group around him laughed at his evident unease with the subject, Leonardo repeatedly insisted, “No comment.”
Margot, pressing further, queried: “Did you mention it at the time? Were you like ‘should we make the door smaller?'” Only for DiCaprio to reiterate, “Like I said, I have no comment.”
Meanwhile, Titanic director James Cameron has not shied away from discussing one of the film’s most debated scenes. In a recent interview regarding Avatar: The Way of Water, he underlined the necessity of Jack’s demise.
“No, [Jack] needed to die. It’s like Romeo and Juliet, right? It’s only poignant. It’s a movie about, you know, love and sacrifice and mortality,” he said. “The love is measured by the sacrifice. Now, maybe I didn’t do it in a way that everybody agrees with, but Jack had to die. It’s that simple. If I had to make the raft a little bit smaller, I’d make it smaller.”
Cameron delved into the rigorous post-film analysis conducted with hypothermia experts, detailing, “Now, incidentally, we have since done a thorough forensic analysis with a hypothermia expert, reproducing the raft from the movie […] where we took two stunt people but with the exact body mass of Kate and Leo. And we put censors all over them and inside them,” he elaborated.
“And we put them in ice water, and we tested to see whether they could have survived by this method, or that method, or that method. And the answer was there was no way they could both survive. Only one could survive.”