Titanic (Scriptment) Page #5

We can see that Rose is experiencing a rush of images and emotions that have lain dormant for eight decades as she handles the small artifacts. Lizzy is concerned about where this is leading, and wants to break off the session, but Brock wants Rose to remember... wants her to go back to the ship again in her mind. And Rose wants to go on.

CUT TO THE IMAGING SHACK on the lab deck. Bodine is giving a tour of his domain, showing Rose what the subs and ROVs are doing two and a half miles down. The backup dive team is down there right now, and he shows her the live video feed on a large wall screen. He tells her about the pressure at that depth, which could crush subs and men like a freight-train going over an ant. That's why they have to use robot manipulators to do the work. Rose surprises him with her grasp of what it all means.

THE IMAGES OF THE WRECK are being fed from Mir One and Two, and the two ROVs, Snoop Dog and DUNCAN.

ROSE sees an image on one of the screens of the bow of the wreck, and she stares at it in silence. It is clearly triggering a powerful memory for her. We drift slowly past the curved bow railing and over the forecastle deck.

Rose smiles wistfully. She hums a little tune. We don't know what it is... something popular in 1912. She's going back in her mind to something that happened to her at the bow.

JUST OUTSIDE THE DOOR, Lizzy is in a private huddle with Lovett. She warns him that she will not allow Rose to become upset, and she will take Rose off the ship immediately if her health is threatened in any way. They enter the shack.

Bodine is just launching into a graphic technical description of how the ship broke up as it sank. Using all the known data on the sinking he has created a computer graphics simulation which he proudly runs for her.

Bodine, talking lightning fast, explains as it is happening on the screen how the iceberg bumped along the starboard side of the ship, popping rivets and separating hull plates over a 300 foot span. Water poured into this intermittent wound, flooding the bow and pulling it under.

THE ANIMATED TITANIC tips down at the bow as its forward compartments flood. The flooding was slow and steady for the first hour and a half, but increased as the forward hatches went under, causing the bow to sink rapidly. This lifted the stern of the ship out of the water, angling up to about 45 degrees. The unsupported weight of the stern caused the hull to buckle and then split right down to the keel, like a pencil snapping, between the third and fourth funnels (smokestacks).

Then the double keel acts as a great hinge, allowing the flooded bow to swing down, while the stern drops back down into the water, almost level.

But the hanging weight of the bow now rapidly pulls down on the front of the stern section, which lifts the stern of the ship high into the air, until it is standing almost upright, at which point the bow section rips loose and heads for the bottom like a dive bomber.

The stern, without all that weight hanging from it, now bobs like a cork, since it hasn't flooded at all yet. Sticking straight up out of the water, for a minute... some say two minutes... it slowly starts to flood and sink.

It picks up speed, finally going under at 2:20 a.m. April 15th.

The animated simulation follows the 450 foot bow section on its two and a half mile plunge. It levels out and planes away from the point of sinking almost a third of a mile before striking the bottom at about 12 miles per hour, slightly nose-down. The keel digs in about 50 feet into the bottom mud at the bow. The hull buckles on impact, then slams down, sitting on top of the mud for most of its length. The superstructure is hammered by the downblast of water sucked along behind the falling hull.

The stern falls straight down, levels out and lands upright. It impacts so hard it blows apart like a soggy cardboard box. Now it's just a big pile of junk with engines in it.

Rose watches this clinical dissection of the disaster without emotion. It doesn't seem to have much to do with her memory. Being in it, having it happen to you, and knowing so little of what was going on at the time, was a completely different experience. Like an ant's-eye view of a train wreck.

She politely thanks Bodine for his explanation. Her eyes go back to the screens, showing the sad ruins far below them.

A VIEW from the one of the subs as it maneuvers over the boat deck. Rose recognizes one of the Wellin davits, still in place. TRACKING SLOWLY over the long deck. Rose hears ghostly waltz music. The faint and echoing sound of an officer's voice, English accented, calling "Women and children only".

FLASH CUTS of screaming faces in a running crowd. Pandemonium and terror. People crying, praying, kneeling on the deck. Just impressions... flashes in the dark.

Rose looks at another monitor. Snoop Dog's camera going past the remains of the grand piano, inside the ship.

FLASH CUTS of a concert grand sliding straight at us. A woman's piercing scream from off-camera. A wall of water blasting dining tables and chairs into kindling.

SNOOP DOG turns into a rusted, debris-filled corridor. Rose watches the endless row of doorways sliding past, like dark mouths.

IMAGE OF A CHILD, two years old, standing ankle deep in water in the middle of an endless corridor. The child is lost and alone, crying. The corridor is flooded as far as the eye can see.

We have the impression of an upwelling of memories and images from the distant past, triggered by seeing the ship again for the first time in three quarters of a century. Rose is shaken by the flood of memories, and overwhelmed by emotion. Her eyes well up and she puts her head down, sobbing quietly.

Bodine and Lovett give each other an "oh sh*t" look. Lizzy breaks off the session and hustles Rose out of the imaging shack.

BODINE:

Well, we showed her ours, but she didn't show us hers.

LATER. Lovett, Bodine and Buell are in the imaging shack, arguing over Rose's identity.

Bodine, reading from faxes, gives them a quick rundown of what their detectives could find on short notice. Earliest information is from the twenties when Rose did some film acting in LA, bit parts, before she went into art... later married a guy named CALVERT and moved to Cedar Rapids, Michigan. They had two kids, both now deceased. Moved back to California in '72 when her husband died. Her maiden name, according to county records in Michigan... was DAWSON.

Not DE WITT BUCKATER.

Rose DeWitt Bukater was not a survivor of the Titanic. And this is bullshit.

The steel door of the shack opens. Lizzy pushes Rose into the room in her wheelchair. Silence as Rose comes into the light, stopping in front of the bank of monitors. She looks from screen to screen, the images of the ruined ship.

Finally she speaks.

ROSE:

It was such a beautiful ship.

Lovett signals everyone with his eyes to stay quiet and listen.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes