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.