Word: counterpoint
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...Since Counterpoint is by genre a simple old-fashioned thriller, a professional touch could have created a breezy kind of Hollywood entertainment. Professionalism extends beyond the question of equipment--Brown's elaborate use of models and rear-projection, his advertising and the cameo stars, all are conceived in a professional way. But the appeal of a Hollywood picture depends on more than this: it has to make sense...
Donald Brown describes Counterpoint as a film of "hidden meanings." "An imposed, artificial order on the surface" (this is supposed to be symbolized visually by recurring shots of clocks, rows, columns, etc.) hides a world of "chaos underneath" (symbolized by smoke). This is "counterpoint." There is also a set of "misconceptions" and "red herrings" in the plot line which parallel this visual theme...
Unfortunately, though, the "chaos underneath" only gives away a general anarchy in the conception of the film itself. This general chaos surfaces in the first few minutes of Counterpoint and rules with an iron hand for the duration of the film. Both of Brown's worlds--the order and the chaos--are presented with the same frenzied, confused montage which wreaks havoc on the plot. Even the masters of quick-cutting, whom Brown openly imitates, structure their films around sequential thought, building their tricks atop a plot that conveys at least a remote sense of plot or development. Tenuous visual...
...Counterpoint does demonstrate an active editing imagination in a number of short scenes. Several times Brown skillfully imitates Hitchcock's murder-in-the-shower sequence from Psycho, and there's an interesting scene at the headphones in Hilles Library. But they do this at Carpenter Center all the time...
...project like the hour-and-a-half-long Counterpoint to work as a movie, it needs to channel its energy better. Less time spent planning cameos, more on the unity that a thriller demands; less concern with gimmickry, more with acting; less spectacle, more drama--whatever the problems, Counterpoint has plenty of them and it didn't have to. It tries--wastefully--to get by on Harvard in-jokes and a flashy facade...