Mark Monroe’s “Titan: ocean disaster“Is too well source and wanted to be confused for one of these macabre documents which arise on Hulu In a week after a major American catastrophe (they go into the subject of the Astromld tragedy at the DIDDY test and the Fyre Festival), but this content of Netflix watching morbid always manages to feel somehow at the same time too early and too late at the same time.
Of course, “too early” is a relative term with regard to such things these days, because the media – social and network – began to salivate on this story long before it was even confirmed that the founder of Oceangate Stockton Rush and the four passengers on his submersible Titan four passengers had been killed when the capsule imploded by diving to the ruins of ruins of ruins of the ruins of ruins of ruins of ruins of ruins of ruins Titanic On June 18, 2023. It may not seem that so long ago, but the last 24 months have undergone more information cycles than several of the previous 24 years, and time has been flattened to the point where Stockton Rush and the 113-year-old shipwreck who summoned him to his death could just as well belong to the same chapter in ancient history.
Anyway, the fact remains that the Oceangate The disaster is so recent – and, more importantly, so well known – that Monroe’s documentary should go much deeper to justify dredging for another look. Although there is nothing deliciously cynical about the movieThe nature or design of its legal denies the familiarity of its evidence, and its subject has already been too well excavated for the sincerity of Monroe’s efforts to shake off this pure signature purification (the pungent stench of an formerly faithful support which was left to rot in streaming).
Yes, this helps that Monroe supervises this story as a edifying story on the dangers of the delivery of common sense to the cults of personality (not that he can be supervised in another way), and the Musk Elon of all definitively lends the Doc a topic that helps to validate its timing. But the dramatic irony of the disaster is too irresistible for the “Titan” to withdraw from it, and – to identify the violins in a disturbing manner – which could have been a more enlightening exploration of “visionary” culture is stabilized for rubbernecking to a rich asshole whose death has always been less remarkable.
There is a good chance that whoever reads this already knows everything he will do on Stockton Rush, which “Titan” considers permission not to lead more deep below. However, the clips that Monroe uses to assert her argument against the CEO of the square jaw – which seems to have believed that his inherent grandeur was the most precious security measure that any submersible could hope for on board – are more overwhelming than all that I remember having seen on television at the time of the incident. “If you hear an alarm, don’t worry,” we hear Rush saying at the start of the film. “The best thing to do is do nothing.” Later, Monroe includes a clip of a panel panel where Rush claims that the Titan carbon fiber shell is “almost invulnerable”. When the interviewer mentions that people said the same thing about the Titanic, Rush nods and smiles. History is rarely kind to the men who condescend to it.
The “Titan” decides predictable to open up with shot images just before the disaster as a teaser for the dead to come, but rather than simply going back in time and making your way through the years from there (with a variety of talking heads to share their personal work experiences with Rush), Monroe opts for a greater stitching structure that followed the ocean and Congression audiences. This approach does not take into account the disinterest of the film for the personal life of Rush and / or the deep causes of its selfishness, but it helps to highlight the inevitability of Titan, which was obvious for everyone except the people who died there.
Rush passengers – who have never been classified as such, because it would have made Oceangate subject to more government regulations that his CEO has so cheeky – takes place mainly here, which is a flagrant omission for a film so concentrated on nuts and bolts of the way in which charisma can seduce people of their common sense. I suspect that the decision was largely established from the sensitivity for the innocent people dead, even if the exception “Titan” explores on the high seas Paul-Henri Nargeolet is cleared with the involvement he should have known better (the daughter of Nargeolet, Sidonie, agreed to be interviewed for the film, although her testimony has more to galvanize our emotions than to explain his father).
Monroe is rather focusing on former Oceangate employees, such as operations director David Lochridge, who whistled – and was immediately dismissed from the Rush company as soon as he understood the extent of the risks involved. And “Titan” describes these risks in nausea and exhaustive details, especially with regard to carbon fiber that Rush used for the Titan shell as a cheap replacement for industry steels and alloys (my stomach fell from the part where the CEO boins from its new Boeing hires). This is one thing to read on what it looked like when the fiber started to break, but it is another to hear this horror in the ear for yourself when the engineers of Oceangate test the material. Instead of fateful diving sequences itself, Monroe effectively uses archive videos like this to nourish our imagination and lend a physical dimension to what it meant each time Rush boasted that the oceangate “made a bizarre shit”.
The carbon fiber shell – designed with the idea of creating a submersible fleet adapted to tourists and the mind – also embodies the degree to which Oceangate was a direct expression of its founder. Like Steve Jobs with Apple or Musk with Tesla, Rush made himself inextricable from her business, to the point that all criticism of his product was naturally considered as a criticism of himself and vice versa.
To this end, one could argue that “Titan” – in its detailed analysis of the way Oceangate has gone from a company focused on a more flashy company which fed on the wonder of the public – reveals more on who Rush was that a more traditional Biodoc has never been able. But Monroe’s film is too fascinated by its own drum of macabre details to make much more than looking at the reality of who Rush was in all its capital and confidence, and to shake the head that most people could not see this reality until it was too late.
While “Titan” is a screen account without a doubt authority of what has led to the Oceangate disaster, the story it tells is so obvious with hindsight – and its content so contained with the macabre entertainment to explore this obviousness – that Monroe’s documentary can only be so deep in what the dead of Stockton Rush and its victims are for the world as a whole. “It is culture that caused it to happen,” said one of the speaking heads of the film. “It was culture that killed the people.” If we understand what they want to say, it’s largely because it threatens to kill the rest of us too.
Grade: C
“Titan: The Oceangate Disaster” was presented in first in 2025 Tribeca Festival. It will be available in broadcast on Netflix from Wednesday June 11.
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