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Review of Sicario (Jóhann Jóhannsson)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... if you crave the experience of being tortured by sound effects repackaged as "music," Jóhann Jóhannsson's intentionally brutal, ambient score certain to disrupt any good mood.

Avoid it... even if you approach this score under the impression that there is intelligence behind its instrumental applications, because Sicario is a surprisingly ordinary work even under the microscope.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Sicario: (Jóhann Jóhannsson) If you're tired of having a delightfully fabulous day and you want an ultimate downer of an examination of humanity, then pair up a Donald Trump political speech with the 2015 movie Sicario and your attitude about the world will cloud up pretty damn fast. Ultra-gruesome societal dramas like this are made in part to enthrall viewers with the notion that sensationalistic corruption and vigilante behavior are actually realistic and also to translate that depressingly stark depiction into the kind of relentless grit that solicits year-end awards. Much praised on both fronts was Sicario, a tragically depressing and harrowingly violent glimpse of America's involvement in the drug wars of the Mexican/American border and an equal indictment of the cartels and sleazy law enforcement. In many ways, Sicario is for the drug cartels what The Godfather was for the mafia, but without any of the romanticism. Director Denis Villeneuve's vision of this part of the world offers little redemption and absolutely no hope, the glorification of Benicio del Toro's character's seemingly mechanized killings so embraced by a society of disillusioned Trump voters eager for verification that the world is a terrible place that Lionsgate quickly explored the possibility of making a franchise of films based on his performance. Needless to say, a movie like Sicario is not meant to be a pleasant experience, and the same is understandably the case with its music. The assignment took Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson closer to his roots than his popular success for The Theory of Everything had done, this continued collaboration with Villeneuve benefitting from positive press and significant awards consideration due to the composer's newfound reputation and the brazen awkwardness of the music. Villeneuve's instruction to Jóhannsson was to create an ambient soundscape that is as much felt as it is heard. The goal was a primordial musical extension of the sound effects mix, and Jóhannsson provided exactly that type of score. Lively debate will ensue about whether the application of music as sound effects is brilliant, lazy, or not even music at all. For those listeners tired of hearing easy harmony and saccharine tonal melodies in their film scores, Sicario could indeed be a nice change, and you thus see people throwing awards consideration at it for being "different." In truth, however, ambient sound-effect scores have existed for a long time and there's nothing revolutionary about what Jóhannsson did here.

There has been much banter about how intelligently Jóhannsson's music for Sicario is constructed. Mostly acoustic at its root, the score still features synthetic manipulation that either dulls the environment or intentionally supplies a clipping effect to the mostly percussive performances. An orchestra exists to growl most of the time, bass strings and brass presenting the score's only recurring motif (a descending minor-third slur heard first in "The Beast" and again in "Tunnel Music") while a percussive heartbeat effect connects sequences in between. The composer throws in subtle orchestral colors here and there, as in "Convoy," but these occasional chirps are not the norm. Expect the key to stay the same throughout every cue, the notes to rarely shift and what little melody exists to be fragmented. Fuller ensemble cues present only broken chord whole notes of despair, as heard throughout the pivotal "Balcony" cue at the end. The problem with this music is not that it really isn't music at all, but that it's not that intelligent in the first place. There's no narrative poignancy within the music itself, and when Jóhannsson begins to explore such territory in the final two cues, the first with child vocals dominated by the main two motifs in conjunction ("Soccer Game") and the latter with nearly insufferable layering of the vocals as a theme for del Toro's vigilante, he fails to adequately develop any kind of catharsis other than increased amplification and the suggestion of dead children with the vocals. A cue for an important scene such as "Fausto," for instance, accomplishes nothing that a sound effects editor couldn't do by sampling the sound of industrial machinery and manipulating it. When you couple that atmosphere with the highly repetitive nature of every cue, the same tone, key, and meter employed from the fade-in to the fade-out, you have an extremely boring and simplistic work. Don't believe all the hype you hear about "subtleties" in this score, because outside the skittish layers of the ensemble in "Convoy," and "Night Vision," you hear very little actual creativity in this work. The electronic distortions of basic percussive rhythms are eye-rolling, a cue like "Surveillance" the kind of noisy muck that any inexperienced composer could generate without a second thought. Even as a horror score, which it definitely is, the work doesn't make much attempt to present a dichotomy of good and evil where one exists, the sole respite in "Melancholia" for solo acoustic guitar in no way reflecting the true battle of wills in the character interactions. Overall, the score for Sicario rumbles like a beast as intended, and it achieves its very basic function as yet another layer of dirty, dreadful haze in the film, but music like this has little purpose on album. It's an ordinary and insufferable ordeal.

• Music as Written for the Film: **
• Music as Heard on Album: FRISBEE
• Overall: *

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 54:10

• 1. Armored Vehicle (1:39) • 2. The Beast (3:14) • 3. The Border (2:56) • 4. Drywall (2:32) • 5. Explosion (1:07) • 6. Desert Music (5:06) • 7. Target (2:01) • 8. Convoy (2:55) • 9. The Bank (2:03)

• 10. Surveillance (1:29) • 11. Reflection (1:56) • 12. Melancholia (4:35) • 13. Night Vision (3:44) • 14. Tunnel Music (4:39) • 15. Fausto (2:16) • 16. Balcony (1:35) • 17. Soccer Game (4:19) • 18. Alejandro's Song (5:47)

NOTES & QUOTES:

The insert includes a short note from the director but no additional information about the score or film.

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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Sicario are Copyright © 2015, Varèse Sarabande and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 1/11/16 (and not updated significantly since).