[Entry in the Close-Up Blog-a-thon, hosted by The House Next Door, running Oct. 12 through Oct. 21. Close-up image from Once Upon a Time In America.]

DeNiro’s poppy induced smile is such a far removed sentiment from the whole of Sergio Leone’s Lower East Side spaghetti crime epic. A man at peace with himself, maybe the only time, only through flashback and only through the use of narcotics, David ‘Noodles’ Aaronson slips away to dream. Of what? We can only image. Wherever he is it is far from the life of a petty criminal filled, upon reflection, with much regret and loss.

The close-up is preceded by Noodles as an older man unknowingly attending the party of a dear friend from days long gone. Aged, listless and drained of any real joy Noodles looks on at the gate where his friend Maximilian ‘Max’ Bercovicz stands in front of his massive Gatsby-esque estate. A garbage truck passes in front of Max as Noodles gazes on. The truck grinds. Max disappears – another ghost from Noodles’ past gone as the truck’s lights fade into the darkness and magically [really, a great visual match dissolve] transform into a Prohibition era car’s headlights full of young men and women celebrating the New Year. Noodles wistfully watches his youth drive off.

Ennio Morricone’s heart-swelling tinny score leads us to the next scene that takes place in the past where we find Noodles, a young man looking to fix what is ailing him. The close-up rides us out – it being the last image we see in this melancholic journey through New York’s immigrant gangster origins to this final destination, a Chinatown opium den.

Noodles tokes up, leans back on a prepared bed and lets his mind wander to blissfully find his gauzy happiness. He does. He is free.

Join in and contribute. To read the guidelines check out the original announcement post here.

The Entries:

6.20

Ill Wind Blows Coppola No Good from Edward Copeland

Alien 3 from Ray DeRousse

The Quiet American from Paul Hackett

The Horror…The Horror from William Speruzzi

M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable – Ambitious Failure? from Simon Crowe

Death Driving Ms. Henstridge from Erich Kuersten

6.21

The Offer That Should Have Been Refused from Chris Daniel

Drowning in Ambition? from Pacheco

Sgt. Peppers Ambitious Failures Club Band from Pat Piper

Fading in the last leg from Wagstaff

6.22

The Folly of The Fountain from Robert Humanick

Dune: Its Name Is A Killing Word from J.D. Lafrance

6.23

Jose Rizal from Oggs Cruz

Charles Burnett: To Sleep With Anger from J.J. Murphy

6.24

Contact High from Bob Westal

Tears in Rain. Thomas Vinterberg’s It’s All About Love from Jeremy Richey

Still Coming In

Sisa and Ambitious Failure 2 from Noel Vera

Note: This is my entry for The Ambitious Failure Blog-a-thon. To further enhance the experience of this post play the .mp3 of “The End” from The Doors while reading.

Apocalypse Now (1979)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Never get out of the boat. Absolutely goddamn right. Unless you were goin’ all the way — Captain Willard

In Francis Ford Coppola exploratory journey into self backdropped against the Vietnam War he almost lost his most valuable asset – himself. Its turbulent history is recognized in the documentary, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse which can be considered a companion piece and should be required viewing before anyone considers picking up a camera. In the documentary, Eleanor Coppola, wife of the director and credited co-director, points the camera on her husband as he expresses his frustration with questions he has created in the screenplay but feels he cannot answer. You feel the dread. Private conversations are recorded without his knowledge over the course of 238 days of production. This is where we start to see the wheels spinning and the man cracking:

“My greatest fear is to make a really shitty, embarrassing, pompous film on an important subject”

In his mind he was doing just that but it didn’t just end there, it was real, for him, his family and his cast and crew. The self-financed film went over budget and that was just the beginning. Two weeks into production in the Philippines, the original actor playing Captain Willard, Harvey Keitel, was replaced by Martin Sheen. The production forged ahead. Sheen continued, doing a scene that required him to lose himself in his character. He did. He lost all control of his faculties in a self-medicated meltdown on his 36th birthday. The results: a scene that will live in infamy and a heart attack that almost cost Sheen his life and Coppola the picture.

The film was originally intended to be shot over six weeks but ended up taking 16 months. Typhoons destroyed sets, causing delays of several months. This list of catastrophes is endless. The film dying a slow death wasn’t just paranoia or insecurity in the mind of director or the cast and crew — it was exacerbated by the Hollywood press from back home. The media was caught up in the great American malady of predicting failure before it actual happens, if not actually rooting for it. The film did get shot, all 200 hours of it. Upon completion of production Coppola had his hands full. It took 2 years for editor Walter Murch to bring the troubled film to a final cut.

Ambition¹ has never been a problem for Coppola. He went to the Philippines coming off the success of the first two Godfather films — classics by anyone’s measure. He was accepted and adored by the industry probably even cocky but I bet he never anticipated his own personal journey into madness up river. The film divided audiences. Upon the film’s initial screenings it was considered obnoxious and self-indulgent² by some. The hot topic of Vietnam was still a fresh and bloody wound in America and the film seemed to be rubbing salt in it with its perceived grotesque theatrics and arrogant self-importance³.

A three hour work-in-progress cut of Apocalypse Now was screened for an international festival audience in Cannes in 1979. It won the Palme d’Or that year for best film, the most prestigious prize a film could be awarded. It also went on to win Best Sound and Best Cinematography at the Academy Awards in 1980. Maybe now you’re probably asking yourself, “and how is this a failure?”

Before you accuse me of a cutting to black moment, hear me out. I took a contrarian approach when picking Apocalypse Now to hopefully make a point for further reflection. When is it considered a failure and by whom? Maybe it’s just semantics but there have been many films over the course of time that have suffered similar problems but didn’t succeed. Art is perception. The 1968 Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey debuted to theater goers walking out and scratching their collective heads. It was lambasted in the reviews. Weeks later it started to gain underground popularity and to this day is considered a masterful triumph yet to be matched. There’s no denying there are films that just flat out fail in every way; financially, critically and artistically. The other side of the overlooked masterpiece is a film like Waterworld but those aren’t necessarily the films I’m thinking of. Again it’s back to perception. Whose to say what works or doesn’t? Did The Fountain fail? Not in my book. But to some it did. Who validates failure and when is it valid? To quote the infinite wisdom of a screenwriter far greater in talent than most, “Nobody knows anything.”

So is Apocalypse Now considered an ambitious failure? In its overall history — absolutely not. I was obsessed with this film when I was all of maybe 13 years old. Its spectacle ignited my interest in cinema and to this day I still get lost in its allegory. Lets just say it made an impression. Part Odyssey, part Joseph Conrad-inspired nightmare of obsession gone awry, throw in a little Werner Herzog and you have classic storytelling at its core, audaciously revealing the mess that took place what might as well have been a million miles away in some foreign land (hmmm) — a film I consider a must see before you die. So…ambitious? As all hell. A failure? Not by a long shot but there was a time when it was considered to be, by its creators and by its naysayers and critics. We all came around.

1. The director, according to archival materials in the recent “Complete Dossier” edition, also stated that his plan was to create a single theater, in the geographical center of the United States (likely Kansas) that would show Apocalypse Now, and only Apocalypse Now. It would be specially tailored to the film, with 3D 70mm projectors, 5.1 surround sound, and the Sensurround system, which would vibrate the seats at the appropriate intervals. In his eyes, it would be “an event”, and he likened it to travelling to Mount Rushmore. — from Wikipedia
2. Gerald Perry interviews Francis Ford Coppola at a press conference for Redux
3. In Hearts of Darkness we see Coppola at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival press conference with his view of the film claiming, “My film is not about Vietnam, it is Vietnam.”

What makes a film “work” is as mysterious as the art form itself. It’s personal and special to the individual audience member but a failure isn’t necessarily as mysterious, it is selective though. Does anyone consider the publicly flogged and misguided Heaven’s Gate a heartbreaking work of staggering genius? Yes, it is too beautiful for words to look at and has incredible talent behind it but…well, you know how that panned out.

By nature most films could be considered. Much blood, sweat and tears go into more productions than not. What separates a film for the sake of this blog-a-thon though is a film that’s scope goes beyond the confines of simplistic entertainment. The ambitious failure should theoretically work on every or most levels given the elements involved, the great care it was given, the outrageous runaway budget, the talent associated or just pure man hours put in but it just doesn’t. The definition of failure is purposefully vague and not necessarily a negative¹ but can be considered financial, critical, artistic or maybe all three. This will hopefully create much debate and probably the occasional mob rules pile on but so be it. Just keep it civil.

To participate there is only one requirement: write a convincing essay that will provoke thought on why your chosen film is considered an ambitious failure, deserved or otherwise, and some thoughts on what went wrong, if hindsight worked in the film’s favor and/or what was the fate of the film’s creators etc.

The Ambitious Failure Blog-a-thon runs from June 20th – 24th, 2007. To participate just e-mail me your essay or preferably a link to it from your site if you have one. You can also link by way of the comments section of this post. I’m looking forward to some great contributions so pass the news along to anyone who you think would be interested. Thanks in advance to all who participate.

1. My Ambitious Failure Pick: At the time of its production, Apocalypse Now suffered from a boatload of career killing rumors but went on to be what many consider the definitive war epic.