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| - Rose Calvert, an ancient but still lively woman of 101 years, watches a television report of the treasure hunt and sees the nude portrait. She phones the treasure hunter Brock Lovett and informs him that she knows of the diamond, the Heart of the Ocean, and also the identity of the beautiful young woman in the portrait: "Oh yes. The woman in the picture is me." Rose, accompanied by her granddaughter, flies out to the recovery site and proceeds to tell the treasure hunters of her experiences on the Titanic. As she tells her story, the film goes back in time to 1912. Rose, just 17 years old in April 1912, boards the ship with the upper-class passengers with her mother and her fiance, Caledon Hockley. Rose clearly does not feel much for Caledon, but her mother pushes for the marriage for financial security, to maintain their current lavish lifestyle and bolster their social cachet among the Philadelphia elite. Meanwhile, a drifter and artist named Jack Dawson wins third-class tickets to the ship in a poker game. Rose is so unhappy about her forced engagement, as well as her endlessly shallow life, that she attempts to kill herself by jumping off the back of the ship. Jack sees her and intervenes to prevent her suicide. Rose's company finds the two and Caledon invites Jack to dine with their party the following evening in the first-class dining saloon as a thank you, however he means it more as entertainment than as an actual thank you. In the meantime, Rose and Jack strike up a tentative friendship as he shares tales of his adventures in traveling and she expresses her own hopes, and he shows her his sketchbook of artwork. Their bond deepens when they later ditch the first-class formal dinner party for a much livelier gathering belowdecks in third-class. Jack is clearly falling in love with Rose, but Rose is inclined to ignore their growing affection because of her engagement and their different social standings. She tries to convince Jack, and herself, that she is in love with Cal. But eventually she decides to throw caution to the wind and offer her heart to Jack. She meets Jack, saying she changed her mind, and she steps up on the rail of the ship. Jack takes her two hands and raises them so she is standing with her arms outstetched. "I'm flying!" She says, and they kiss. They return laughing to her bedroom, and Rose asks Jack to sketch her wearing nothing but the Heart of the Ocean diamond, the same portrait the treasure hunters will find 84 years later. Cal finds the picture and sends Lovejoy to find Rose and Jack. The two run away, holding each other and laughing, down to the bottom of the ship into a cargage hold, where they consummate their relationship in the backseat of a car in one of the ship's cargo holds. In the meantime, Captain Edward J. Smith and his crew have been seemingly ignoring many warnings about upcoming ice fields in the ship's path, and the Titanic maintains the high speed suggested by White Star Line managing director J. Bruce Ismay even as the ship heads into the night. On the night of April 14, 1912, the two lookouts see an iceberg directly in the Titanic's path. Despite the many efforts of the crew and engineers, the ship strikes the massive berg, flooding the lower compartments past their "unsinkable" capacity and causing the ship to begin its unstoppable descent to disaster. Caledon discovers the relationship between Jack and Rose and gets even by framing Jack for stealing his diamond. Jack is locked away near the bottom of the ship, and Rose isn't totally sure whether he actually stole it or not. Rose and her family are asked to board a lifeboat, but Rose refuses and runs away to find Jack. Tbey almost die because of the growing amount of water, but they make it out when she frees him with an axe. They try desperately to make their way back above decks to escape the rapidly sinking ship. They find many obstacles, including locked gates that are used to keep the third-class passengers from reaching the upper decks to safety, as well as Caledon's violent temper that forces them back to the lower decks. They finally make their way to the top deck, but the lifeboats are gone and they, along with hundreds of terrified passengers, have no choice but to try to stay on the ship for as long as possible as to not freeze before the ship sinks completely into the water. The bow of the ship sinks deeper and deeper until the pressure on the hull causes the ship to split completely in half, before the two halves finally go under at 2:20 a.m. on April 15. Rose and Jack stick together and wait with the hundreds of other passengers thrashing helplessly in the water, shouting desperately for those in lifeboats to row back and rescue them. Rose almost thinks that she will die, but Jack tells her that she will "die an old woman, warm in your bed, not here, not tonight." He tells her to never let go of that promise. By the time one of the officers decides to row back and help those in need, almost all of the passengers have died of hypothermia in the freezing Atlantic. Rose is heartbroken to realize that Jack has succumbed, as well. She bids him goodbye, telling him that she will never let go as she watches his corpse sink underwater, then manages to get the lifeboat's attention to come back and rescue her. The survivors in the lifeboats wait for hours until the RMS Carpathia, the closest ship to answer and heed the Titanic's radio distress signals, arrives to save them. "Afterward, the seven hundred people in the boats had nothing to do but waith... wait to die, wait to live, wait for an absolution which would never come." Upon arrival at New York, Rose discovers she still has the Heart of the Ocean tucked into the pocket of Caledon's coat. As an old woman in 1996, Rose now goes onto the deck of the salvage ship and throws the Heart of the Ocean into the ocean to be with Jack. Back in Rose's room, the viewer see pictures of her life's achievements, including a photograph of her riding a horse at the Santa Monica Pier, just as she and Jack had planned to do together. Rose lies in bed nearby, a scene where some fans have debated whether she is asleep or had passed away. Underwater, the Titanic looms out of the darkness and everything turns new again. A Steward opens the doors from the promenade deck to the Grand Staircase, where all those who died on the ship smile in greeting. At the top of the staircase, Jack turns and smiles at Rose, a young girl of 17 again, smiling back as he helps her up the last few steps. They kiss as the crowd applauds at the couple.
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