A sinking feeling

A number of years ago now I was travelling in Nepal and was lucky enough to meet a couple of local lads with whom a friend and I shared dinner one night. These two guys were in their early twenties, came from poor village families and were just full of spunk. Over the meal they discussed their impressive dreams for the future, and one of them shared with us his desire to become a filmmaker. He went on to detail his commitment to the craft of film making, the lengths that he had gone to in order to get experience in the field, and his ambition to one day make his own film that would be just like his favourite film of all time.

"Do you want to know which film that is?" he asked.

I was impressed by his commitment to film making and his ability to dream so big in the face of a country that was sliding into civil war and further and further into poverty. I racked my brains for a film that was independent and bold enough to possibly be this guy's favourite film, but didn't guess because I thought that it was probably a Bollywood film that I had never seen.

"Titanic," he announced, with a big cheesy smile. "You know this film?"

He friend (who, BTW, wanted to be a rock star and could play the guitar and sing very well) piped in, "I love that song too. You know it? My heart will go on..."

I struggled to hide my shock.

Titanic?!? Why?

Celine Dion? No!

Over the last few years I have become more immune. From all over South and South East Asia hip and trendy young men (and women, although less frequently) have detailed to me their love of Titanic and Celine Dion's theme song. That bloody sound is also played loudly throughout the region and everyone seems to know and love it. Over the years I have, in fact, become so immune that I have forgotten to ask why anymore. That is unless I saw this article in today's Guardian - Bellydancing out, cinema in, says Hamas.

Of course, there are many more questions raised by this particular article, such as: Why bellydancing? And, how does Attallah Abu al-Sibbah, the new Palestinian culture minister, know that people do it indoors, in secret? However, the quote that caught my attention was this one:

"Titanic was a good film, a human film"

Now I feel compelled to find out Why? What it is that made Titanic a good film to all of these people?

To me, it was boring. It went for at least an hour too long. The part (otherwise known as the entire second half) where the boat is sinking and Kate and Leonardo keep running up and down the ship calling each other's name almost destroyed my will to live. It was cheesy and slow and dull. And the old woman threw a valuable diamond into the ocean rather than giving it to her granddaughter or to charity, which also really annoyed me.

Can anyone enlighten me here? Why was Titanic so popular?