That gripping film A Night to Remember concentrated on the few hours between the iceberg's shuddering contact and the Titanic's end.
If anyone had planned a film about the Fianna Fail-Progressive Democrat coalition, they should start work now. Icebergs may not yet be in view, but the pack ice is all about.
This has been the Government's worst week, not only because of questions raised by the evidence of Dermot Ahern and Mary Harney at the Flood tribunal or left unanswered after the Dail's discussion of the Sheedy affair.
There is the accumulated trouble of many months, indeed - as the proceedings at Dublin Castle showed - a series of problems which ought to have been resolved before the partners agreed to form a coalition.
And much of the unfinished business began with a Taoiseach whose style has always been casual but whose deviousness and cunning were once considered by friend and foe to be an advantage.
Now, they are the Government's greatest liabilities. It's not just the Opposition which must be asking why he acted as he did in the Sheedy case. His colleagues and partners must ask with Ruairi Quinn why he has not condemned Charles Haughey; why, above all, he appointed Ray Burke.
It now appears that he knew much more about the donations given to Mr Burke before he chose to appoint him and persuaded Mary Harney to accept him as a Cabinet colleague.
But Bertie Ahern's efforts at self-defence become more and more reminiscent of a headline once handed to young journalists as a model of brevity: "Sewer crisis worsens - minister steps in". The Taoiseach's friends in the media and supporters in the party cheer his attempts to escape the consequences of actions he pretends not to understand.
He waves back, hoping to divert attention with innocent talk of the best intentions, the worst of memories and homely chats in Fagan's of Drumcondra or the Gravediggers in Glasnevin.
But he's dogged by an unfortunate feature of Fianna Fail behaviour since the year of GUBU: pleas of innocence are accompanied by the appearance of guilt. He is not waving but drowning.
This was not the first week in which he found himself grappling with days, dates and explanations of how he came to act in a way that he thought perfectly normal and others found distinctly suspicious.
He hasn't just had a bad week of it, he has had a bloody awful year. Since May of 1998 it has just been one damned thing after another, with the Burkes, Ray and Joe, Charles Haughey and Padraig Flynn making regular appearances in his political nightmare.
In May there was the news that Ray Burke, who'd been given £30,000 by JMSE, had also been given £30,000 by a Fitzwilton subsidiary, Rennicks. And it was from that £30,000 that Mr Burke had passed on £10,000 to party headquarters for the 1989 election.
Mr Ahern seems to have been told of the Rennicks donation long before he faced the Dail on the issue. It was a report of the transaction in Magill that took him by surprise.
Then, as John Bruton reminded him on Wednesday, he said: "I have never concealed information or been economical with the truth. I ask my colleagues to accept that. It is simply not in my nature."
But by the end of the year he'd been surprised again. Mr Haughey's tax assessment amounted to £2 million, which was no surprise to anyone who'd paid attention to the disclosures at the McCracken tribunal.
Now, though, it had been reduced to zero. And in the Dail Mr Ahern admitted to Pat Rabbitte that the Appeals Commissioner who'd made the decision was his brother-in-law. (Appointed by Mr Ahern when he was Minister for Finance.)
But he'd told Ms Harney that the second Appeals Commissioner was a Labour appointee.
The second commissioner was nothing of the kind; indeed, because of a Fianna Fail connection, he'd chosen not to hear the case, leaving Mr Ahern's brother-in-law to act alone.
In the Dail, Charlie McCreevy brushed the affair aside, as he'd once brushed off strange happenings in National Irish Bank and an incipient financial crisis in the Far East.
The New Year was no better than the old. In January Mr Ahern was reported to have met Tom Gilmartin, an Irish developer now living in Luton, who claims to have given Padraig Flynn £50,000 in 1989.
For the party, the developer said. What the minister said, or did, has yet to become clear. Mr Flynn's famous reminder of Mr Gilmartin's generosity managed to infuriate the donor without answering the question.
What the Taoiseach and his party did to discover what had happened could hardly be described as an inquiry. Mr Ahern's attitude seemed to be that, with the help of Flood and a bit of luck. . . all would be revealed.
As for the claim that he'd had several meetings with Mr Gilmartin, Mr Ahern's first reaction was to deny, point blank, that they'd met more than once. Then the records were checked: there had been a second meeting and a third.
Mr Ahern explained that he'd changed his account in line with Mr Gilmartin's, but he was running out of patience with the Opposition: "If what I say here leads to people ringing Mr Gilmartin and he says X, Y or Z and I have to come back to say he said X, Y or Z, or if someone rings him and says A, B and C and I must come back here to say A, B and C, I will be here for the rest of my life. And I will not do that."
It doesn't appear to have occurred to him that what was needed was the nearest he could get to a dependable account of events about which the public had every reason to be alarmed.
And his version of events was not reassuring.
Nor was it reassuring to witness the extraordinary reaction to the report by Geraldine Kennedy about the payment of funds from the account of a man seeking an Irish passport into a Fianna Fail fund in the names of Albert Reynolds and Dermot Ahern.
All the stops were out, all supporters in the media called in to suggest that the report was unfounded and prompted by hostility to the Government and its leaders.
The report was true.
But we've had the same hysterical response to the Sunday Tribune's report on Mr Ahern's representations in the Sheedy affair and - more to the point - the long concealment of relevant information from the Dail and the public.
John O'Donoghue has long displayed a capacity for detecting conspiracies in every corner. When he's joined by Mr Ahern, it's bad news for those who must rely on them and, in particular, on the Taoiseach's judgement.
The pack ice is closing in.