With Monos, Mica Levi has further established themselves as the foremost contemporary experimental film composer, using dissonance and unconventional instrumentation and composition to build tension and unease.
The score’s most striking music is also its most jarring. Sounds akin to the electronic mimicry of birds and monkeys chirping punctuate the score’s main theme. At first, they sound completely at odds with the film’s focus on the chaos of a child paramilitary group in the jungles of South America. But as the narrative progresses, the inorganic elements of the score become ever more fitting, adhering to the film’s theme of the clash of technology and modernity with nature and our primal selves. Unsurprisingly, this music comes at the most atavistic moments, when “civilization” is stripped away and replaced with ancient ritualism.
At times the electronics build into noisy, barraging climaxes to match the sheer chaos of the children’s rituals, such as during the pandemonium of the faux boar hunt and the dancing and chanting that follow. At others, it is calm, subdued, matching the softer, kinder moments between the group. When taken to the extreme, the electronics melt away entirely, leaving behind waves of gentle warmth, most prominent during the budding relationships of young love. But, inevitably, the chirps return in dissonant conflict, taking this warmth away.
