Escaping a sinking boat, a man & a woman find that their life jackets won’t inflate. Swimming desperately, they find a single life jacket floating in the choppy sea. It’s the setup for a classic dilemma. The expected denouement is a heroic sacrifice, tropes of love & chivalry all wrapped up in a foam vest.
Except it doesn’t happen that way: it turns out that both are able to cling to the lone life jacket for more than half an hour until they are rescued. Anticlimax?
The not-so -doomed lovers were a newly wed couple. A Brazilian doctor & a business woman on their honeymoon in the Maldives. No iceberg involved. Their boat with nearly 50 people on board was hit by a big wave.
Twenty minutes later, the boat started leaning on one side. The passengers were asked to wear their life jackets & jump out. Nobody was hurt- except for the psychological trauma.
‘That’s some Titanic love’ wrote one. ‘Proof that Jack could ‘ve survived the Titanic’ said another. The latter’s an old idea that’s taken life of it’s own among the fans over the years.
Director James Cameron conducted an experiment with two stunt men in a pool, and found there was a possibility that both Jack & Rose could have survived if they had balanced on the raft & Kept their upper bodies out of water.
That might have pleased the crowd but would n’t it have defeated the point? Jack died & our hearts will ache on. Thankfully once in a while , reality is kinder than fiction.
For the star crossed lovers on screen we pine like they are someone we know intimately. Today & forever. Just like Rose.
Asian Entertainment 