Ghosts of the Abyss is a 2003 documentary directed by James Cameron. It covers his return to the wreck of Titanic in late 2001, he first went in 1995 to shoot footage for Titanic, but now he’s here for science and exploration. Diving 4000 meters down alongside all kinds of scientists, historians, ecologists and Bill Paxton. The doc mainly follows Paxton, who starts slightly sceptical at his inclusion, but grows into a real member of the team. Cameron has placed him here as a kinda ‘everyman’ to offer insights and ask stupid questions. It sometimes works and sometimes he’s a little out of touch. The jet setting, trailer dwelling, Hollywood star being as much of an ‘everyman’ as you might imagine. He does get across a less scientific perspective, but the scientists and other visitors to the wreck manage that too. They’re also often more poetic, because they aren’t trying to be, and they’re more genuine and less self-centred with their reflections.

Cameron’s plan for this expedition is to dive down to the wreck in submersibles, then send tiny remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) into the corridors and rooms of the ship. It works perfectly and feels so tenuous; they’re deep underwater, with these shoebox robots on long, thin, fiberoptic tethers. So many things could go wrong, so many moving parts, technologies stretched. Cameron says it took 3 years to develop these robots, to make machines that have to work in conditions so remote and unimaginable. He’s clearly deep in his passion here, surrounded by experts and technicians. They plan their dives with table sized models of the wreck, Cameron moving tiny models of their subs and tinier ones of the ROVs. Even here he’s directing; plotting scenes, planning shots. Like Paxton you can take him out of Hollywood, but he’s the same person doing the same thing.

The images of the inside of the wreck are genuinely moving, it’s a ghost town and an incidental time capsule. There’s a lot of damage, ‘rusticals’ coat the ceiling as microbes eat the steel of the ship, various decay, smashed windows, buckled metal. But you can see though it somehow, there are moments where you feel the work of a carpenter, the hand of someone who placed a glass on a table. It’s the definition of eery. No one who built this ship, or sailed on it, whether they escaped or not, could ever conceive of this expedition. Of people going so deep and working so hard to see this broken ship and marvel at its remains.

They use various visual and special effects to put people back onboard. Adding ghosts to the hallways, bringing back some life and scale. It’s often a jaw dropping effect, one that really helps you understand what you’re looking at and where you are in the vessel. But it overstays it’s welcome, after a while you learn to see the ship though the rust and barnacles. So seeing ghostly approximations of what was there becomes redundant. I found it frustrating. The film doesn’t trust the audience enough – it kept telling us what to see, dictating the experience, rather than gently holding your hand, guiding your eye. I really wish it had backed off a little, because the bones of the ship are enough.

No one is talking too much about the disaster, the lives lost and cultural impact. But then, for these American explorers at least, the world fundamentally changes. One of the scientists, deep underwater in a submarine, says the date to the camera, he’s just making a note, so that if the label goes missing the footage makes sense.
“And the time is 6:16, September 11th, 2001…”
They return to the surface and Paxton tells James Cameron that two planes have flown into the twin towers, ‘they think it’s a terrorist attack’. These two very Hollywood guys, on a kinda Hollywood adventure to a momentous disaster site, hear about a momentous disaster happening back home. It’s the perfect twist, it puts everything into new context, if you wrote it, no one would believe it etc.

From there the film goes to incredible lengths to tell you how to feel about the wreck and what context the parallel disaster of 9/11 has. It was here my girlfriend mused ‘I’d have rather seen the unedited footage,’ the more I think about that, the more I agree. Because they’re overlaying all this context, they’re making bold statements about how men stood back gallantly, or romanticising the deaths of lower class passangers and staff. Not all of it is true, not all of it is relevant, it’s insulting and it gets in the way. A more honest, less Hollywood experience wouldn’t tell you what to think, but I guess that’s not who James Cameron is.