What makes a good ensemble piece?

[Joe Washington]

Pulp Fiction, Love Actually, Short Cut, Nashville, Magnolia. They are all ensemble pieces, stories that revolve around a large cast of characters. The question that's on my mind about them is what are the key elements that make them work so good as ensemble pieces?

 

[Starbreaker]

Everybody has to be able to act, there can't be a single boring story, and there has to be an ending that ties everything together and makes you go "hmm. I need to watch that again".

 

[zakkrusz]

I find that movies that try to do this on a large scale very rarely succeed. If you try to run more than two or three stories at a time you don't succeed at doing either of them very well. In addition the more characters there are the more chance that some of their development will be neglected as there simply isn't enough time in a movie for everything. It does work in TV series a lot better though.