November 2019 | Sight&Sound | 39
The eerie violin glissandos that British singer,
producer and composer Mica Levi came up
with for Jonathan Glazer’s 2013 sci-fi Under
the Skin perfectly evoked the marriage of
aliens and eroticism and marked her out as
a radical interloper in cinema soundscapes.
Even her score for Pablo Larraín’s biopic Jackie
(2016) – with its full orchestral arrangements,
her most traditional to date – was inspired
by the fact that, after the death of JFK, Jackie
Kennedy was “kind of high all the time”.
Levi’s score for Monos also has an out-of-body,
otherworldly feel, the swarming synth and
mix of whistles and drums conjuring the
anxiety not just of warfare, but of adolescence.
Isabel Stevens You first saw Monos
when Alejandro Landes had a rough cut.
What made you want to work on it?
Mica Levi Sometimes I see a film and I’ll
enjoy it but I won’t have an urge to write
anything for it; I won’t be right for it. With
Monos, I felt like there was a lot I could relate
to. These sound like strange things, but here
goes: the environment is not totally sanitary,
there’s lots of deep greens, there was a lot of
plastic and leather and bits of metal and a lot
of soil and foliage. That all really appealed
to me. I could tie that to sounds easily.
IS How did you approach composing for two
very different landscapes: the mountain
range and the claustrophobic rainforest?
ML The landscapes are so beautiful. One of the
very first things I tried was a whistle. It was a
recording I made years ago. I thought of it and
found it. What you have going on in the score
is a small whistle and a large drum. I thought
it would suit the mountains. I am not sure I
thought this at the time, but looking back on
it, it might be because you have something
small and something big, and I guess that
might reflect the enormity of the space. In the
mountains, it’s quieter sound-wise, it’s damp.
At first I thought guitar might be good but that
had too many ties, it had to be less specific.
IS The whistles make the score unique. What
was it about the sound that appealed to you?
ML It doesn’t really budge. It is what it is.
It’s gospel, if that makes sense. You don’t
defy this. It’s straight and it does exactly
the same thing each time. There’s no
room for discussion with a whistle.
IS The whistle represents the ‘Organisation’
- we hear it whenever the Messenger arrives.
ML There’s a few different whistles made in
different ways. In the Organisation whistle
there is a faint recording of birds in there. I
don’t even know if it’s audible but that’s the
secret ingredient of the film... I can’t believe I
just told you the secret ingredient of the film.
IS Through the use of things like whistles,
your score is far from a typical bombastic
soundtrack to a war film. Were you
consciously thinking about composing in
opposition to the violence on screen?
ML It’s such a complicated situation out there
and I’m so far removed from it. I wouldn’t
feel comfortable attempting to match that
kind of heavy, and for me incomprehensible,
situation. What I was relating to in the
film was the fact that all these teenagers
are figuring life out and if you took away
the environment and the weapons and put
them in a city, similar issues come up, of
surviving and who’s friends with who.
IS Alejandro told me that the
score felt primal to him.
ML The film is less innocent than that. It’s
about adolescent experience. There’s mud
and sweat. There’s heavy weaponry. It’s an
extreme lifestyle. But also you’ve got spots and
the rest of it. It’s a peak version of adolescence.
IS Is that where the euphoric, synthy
elements of the score come in?
ML Yeah, there’s a riser and
that’s an adrenaline rush.
IS In the scene where the characters
take mushrooms, the flute
introduces a more playful mood.
ML The thing with mushrooms or that
kind of hallucinogenic experience is that
it’s visually quite clear, whereas everything
else is very complicated and messy. The
images start to clarify and the colours are
brighter. I tried to emulate that instead of
having typically trippy music, because I don’t
think that’s accurate. I feel like those sounds
are more drunk sounds, when actually
psychedelics are more geometric and precise.
IS What’s the best way you’ve found
to collaborate with directors?
ML If someone talks to you in musical
terms or really specifically, it closes the
door on what you can do... I’m still figuring
it out. I haven’t done that many films. It’s
useful to know where the director feels
music should go but then you have to
let people do their thing. You shouldn’t
really know exactly what you want.
SETTLING
THE SCORE
The Oscar-nominated composer Mica
Levi discusses the art of fitting sounds
to landscapes in ‘Monos’, why trippy
music usually feels wrong and what
her secret ingredient is for the film
By Isabel Stevens
Still figuring it out: Mica Levi
PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEPHANIE SIAN SMITH
A whistle is what it is. It’s
gospel, if that makes sense.
It’s straight and there’s no
room for discussion with it
AT A GLANCE
MICA LEVI
The daughter of musicians, 32-year-old
Mica Levi started playing the violin at the
age of four and trained classically before
forming and becoming the front woman of
the experimental pop band Micachu and the
Shapes (now called Good Sad Happy Bad).
After encountering their moody but beautiful
dissonant soundscapes, often made with
handmade instruments, Jonathan Glazer
asked Levi to score his alien sci-fi Under the
Skin (2013). She has scored two films since:
Jackie (2016) and another sci-fi Marjorie
Prime (2017). The last film she watched
was Gus Van Sant’s 2007 Paranoid Park.
A RT
PRODUCTION
CLIENT
SUBS
REPRO OP
VERSION
Monos, 4
