You’ve all seen the movie; now live the legend. The Titanic has officially set port at the Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal. This monumental event consists of the huge Omnimax production of Titanica and the Titanic artifact exhibit. In Titanica, we travel three miles to the bottom of the ocean with American and Russian scienstists to do researrch on a vessel that has remained virtually untouched for over 80 years.
The Titanic exhibit portion consists of over 200 pieces of wreckage that have been catalogued and put on display, so that we can experience first hand what life was like aboard the giant ocean liner.
The Omnimax presentation is good, but I find it to be hard to follow because of its enormous screen size. The film itself was shot in the early 1990s, when Omnimax shooting principles were more fit to be seen on a television screen and directors had not yet mastered the technique of shooting a true Omnimax film.
The extreme close ups (used abundantly in this film) make me feel disoriented, and half the time it is hard for me to make out what I am looking at. The film has a very good story line and is pieced together well, yet I feel that it could have been done much better. Still the film is enjoyable and has real historical significance.
The exhibit on the other hand is the most fulfilling part of the entire event. They start off by giving you a single ticket with a passenger’s name on it, male or female, depending on your gender. You then journey inside to a dimly lit hallway, where a few articles recovered from the wreck sit in glass cases.
As you journey further inside, you come to the heart of the exhibit, where more pieces sit in silence. A low music is played in the background and looking around at the treasures of Titanic can produce a grumbling feeling in your belly. Tools, glasses, wine bottles, necklaces, boots and even letters that are still readable are all on display.
You then come to the interactive part of the exhibit in which a huge block of ice sits to the side of the room and a video documentary plays, showing how the ship struck the iceberg. You are challenged to try to keep your hand on the iceberg as long as you can, and trust me; it’s cold. After gritting it out for over a minute, I surrendered to the freezing iceberg replica, and it was then brought to my attention that the water the night the Titanic sank was three degrees colder than the block I had just succumbed to.
As you walk into the Titanic’s sleeping room replicas, ranging from first to third class, a dreary woman stands at the end of the corridor. She is a passenger on the Titanic (an actress of course, dressed to the part) who still believes she is on the ship and has no idea it is going to sink. She creaped me out, so I tried to avoid her, but she started talking to me anyway about my accommodations in third class, which happened to be where my ticket said I was housed.
At this point I realized I was a dead man. She reminded me how deep in the bowels of the ship I was, and I had already come to realize what was waiting for me at the end of the exhibit. The woman never broke character and after finishing my conversation and complimenting her peacock feathered hat, I moved on.
The final room of the exhibit is lined with comments from survivors of the sinking. The quotes range for crewmen to children, most coming from the congressional inquisition following the disaster.
It’s there they’ve placed the wall with the names of the dead and survivors. The survivor list takes up less than a quarter of the wall, and as you might have already guessed, I was among the listed dead or missing, an entire wall of nothing but names, most of whom died that night.
The exhibit isn’t like the movie. On screen it’s easy to accept as fiction. But when you’re standing there with all the evidence around you, the brutal truth that this tragedy actually happened weighs on you a lot more. The final piece of the exhibit is an actual fragment of the Titanic’s hull, hanging in the air by two huge chains. I figured “why not” and reached over and attempted to touch it, only to be stopped short by an exhibit employee who was practically standing right next to me (duh). I apologized, and she smiled, allowing me to leave the exhibit without criminal prosecution.
Anyway, I truly recommend you check out the Titanic exhibit before it sails away on March 9. The cost is $15.50 for both the movie and the exhibit, but $6.50 for the movie and $12 for the exhibit if you want to see them separately.
Call the Cincinnati Museum Center at 562-4949 for hours and show times.