A seventeen-year-old aristocrat falls in love with a kind but poor artist aboard the luxurious, ill-fated R.M.S. Titanic.
PLOT
In 1996, aboard the research vessel Akademik Mstislav Keldysh, treasure hunter Brock Lovett and his team explore the wreck of RMS Titanic, hoping to find a necklace known as the Heart of the Ocean. Instead, they recover a safe containing a drawing of a young woman wearing the necklace. The sketch is dated April 14, 1912, the day the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank, resulting in about 1,500 deaths. After seeing a television report about the discovery, centenarian Rose Dawson Calvert contacts Lovett, revealing herself as the woman in the drawing. Hoping she can help locate the necklace, Lovett brings Rose and her granddaughter aboard the Keldysh, where Rose recounts her experience as a Titanic passenger.
In 1912, 17-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater boards the Titanic in Southampton with her wealthy fiancé, Cal Hockley, and her mother, Ruth. Ruth stresses that Rose's marriage to Cal will resolve their financial problems, but Rose is unhappy in the loveless engagement. Feeling trapped, Rose contemplates suicide by jumping from the ship's stern, but is stopped by Jack Dawson, a poor nomadic artist who won his ticket in a poker game. Jack and Rose form a friendship, and Jack confesses his growing feelings for her. Though initially resistant, Rose realizes she has fallen in love with Jack, despite Cal's and Ruth's disapproval.
Rose brings Jack to her stateroom and ask him to draw her nude wearing only the necklace. Afterward, they evade Cal's valet, Lovejoy, and have sex in a car in the cargo hold. On the forward deck, they witness the ship's collision with an iceberg and overhear officers discussing the severity of the situation. When Cal discovers Jack's sketch of Rose and a mocking note she left, he arranges to frame Jack for theft by having Lovejoy plant the necklace on him. Jack is arrested and locked in the master-at-arms' office, while Cal places the necklace in his coat pocket.
As the ship begins sinking, women and children are prioritized for the lifeboats. Rose finds and frees Jack, and they return to the deck, where Cal urges Rose to board a lifeboat, claiming he and Jack will board another lifeboat. He unwittingly wraps his coat, containing the necklace, around her. However, as her lifeboat is lowered, Rose jumps back onto the sinking ship, unwilling to leave Jack behind. Enraged, Cal grabs a pistol and chases them through the flooding ship but gives up when they escape. Cal manages to secure a place on a lifeboat by pretending to be a child's father.
As the ship's flooded bow sinks, the stern rises into the air, and Jack and Rose cling to the railing. The ship splits in two, and the stern sinks into the freezing water with the remaining passengers. Jack helps Rose onto a small floating piece of debris and makes her promise to survive and live a full life. Jack dies from the cold, but Rose is saved by a returning lifeboat and later rescued by the RMS Carpathia. Rose remains hidden from Cal and her mother and gives her name as Rose Dawson on her arrival in New York City.
In the present, Rose reveals that Cal committed suicide after losing his fortune in the 1929 stock market crash. She tells the Keldysh crew that Jack saved her in every possible way, and laments that her memories are all that she has left of him. Touched by her account of the Titanic, Lovett abandons his search for the necklace. Alone at night on the stern of the Keldysh, Rose, who has kept the necklace in her possession all along, drops it into the sea above the wreck. Later, as she lies seemingly asleep in her bed, photographs on her dresser show a life of freedom and adventure inspired by Jack. Aboard the pristine and undamaged Titanic, a young Rose reunites with Jack at the Grand Staircase, applauded by the passengers and crew who died in the sinking.