Counterpart

A musician who is finding it difficult to compose his newest piece of work finds some unexpected help from an other-worldly version of himself.

The unnamed composer (Correa) wakes up to the continuous ticking of a metronome. He’d fallen asleep on his bed with all of his clothes on as he desperately tried to get something of his new composition out of his head and onto the page, but to no avail. Picking up some of what he wrote, and trying to get some sort of tune out of it, is no use, and he scrumples up the paper and throws it in the bin. Sitting in dumbstruck silence at his keyboard, looking at the keys with no hope, he suddenly hears a noise outside the window, as a great shadow moves menacingly beyond the shades of the blind.

With a flash of white light, the composer is transported to another realm, or at least a version of him is, and that damned metronome is busy rhythmically counting out the seconds again. He, too, is all dressed in white, as are all of his surroundings, suggesting that he is in some sort of ethereal plane of beauty or heavenliness, and he finds that it might just be here that the answer to all of his creative problems lies. Exploring this realm, the angelic composer tries to find himself and the music that has been eluding him up until now.

At only six-and-a-half minutes long, Counterpart doesn’t have a lot of time to tell its story. This doesn’t really matter, however, as the composer and his doppelganger are the only characters in the film and there is no dialogue between them. The plot is very thin on the ground, too, with only the bare bones of what is needed to share a narrative given to the viewer to chew upon, and everything being over with almost as soon as it started. There are no surprises or side-lines in Counterpart, with everything going in exactly the direction you would expect it to, until it reaches the denouement that you always knew was coming anyway.

All of the technical aspects are handled proficiently enough, with writer/director, Ethan Grover placing the camera where he needs to within the confined environment to keep the face and the emotion of the composer in the frame, while DoP James Nield highlights enough of a difference between one world and the next to make sure that we always understand where we are. Sound obviously plays a big part in the narrative of Counterpart, with the first half of the film being eerily silent, save for a few incidental sounds, while the second half comes alive once the composer starts to put his new composition together.

The music itself, sadly, isn’t all that exciting or enticing for the viewer, and it’s hard to believe that the composer would really go to all these lengths, and find such inspiration in his other-worldly muse, just for the short snatches of music that we get. While there’s nothing wrong with what we’re being given as an audience, it just doesn’t engender enough interest to necessarily justify us being there in the first place.

Counterpart is a short, simple film that does exactly what it says on the tin. There are no frills, and definitely no spills, to speak of, and by the time it’s finished there a distinct feeling of ‘meh’ about the whole affair. Something this bare is difficult to get excited about, as it does what it needs to do and nothing else. Still, for what it is, and what it sets out to achieve, it manages it all pretty well.