Music is the tissue that connects us to the world, each other, and ourselves. And in Behemoth!, it’s not merely the profession of cellist Alex Serian (Pedro Pascal), but the way Tony Gilroy draws us into his tale.
Led by the most nuanced and soulful work of Pedro Pascal’s career, this film about a man navigating a life of glorious melodies and squandered opportunities is a cinematic concerto the viewer sinks into—euphorically, sadly, deeply.
Making its world premiere as the Centerpiece selection of the New York Film Festival (and debuting in theaters Dec. 4), Behemoth! is the Oscar-nominated Gilroy’s first official behind-the-camera feature since 2012’s The Bourne Legacy. He’s remained busy in the interim, most notably by ghost-helming 2016’s Rogue One and, to great acclaim, creating and show-running Disney+’s Andor.
Despite pairing with a fellow alum from the galaxy far, far away in The Mandalorian’s Pascal, his latest is a distinctly more grounded affair, if no less thrilling, courtesy of a lyrical structure that crashes and tiptoes, soars and plummets, with inviting gracefulness.
In a studio where a film score is about to be recorded, Alex is warmly greeted by colleagues who are surprised and happy to see he’s back in his native Los Angeles. Alex says he’s returned because of his mother’s failing health, but as the orchestra begins to play, Behemoth! flashes back to his recent concert in Chicago. That show is a rousing success. Afterward, however, Alex gets a call warning him that his girlfriend Carol (Olivia Wilde), who funds the ensemble, is on the warpath—the result of Alex’s decision to leave the company, city, and, by extension, her.
In a J.Lo-esque low-cut dress, Wilde cuts an imperious figure as she marches through the venue, and Gilroy’s camera trails behind her and Pascal as the former pursues the latter into the snowy night. If the director’s cinematography is attuned to his protagonist’s emotional state, his score practically emanates out of him—to some extent, literally, as Alex’s performances serve (along with snippets of music he listens to via headphones and at club concerts) as the soundtrack to Behemoth!.
Sound, image, and character are inherently and indivisibly interlocked, lending the film a harmony that reaches the core of Alex’s heavy, conflicted heart.
In Los Angeles, Alex reconnects with his brother Andy (Will Arnett), whom he initially spies fighting with his wife through a giant window—a comic scene accompanied, humorously, by a cartoon score composed by their father (Hank Azaria) and featured on Andy’s podcast. Gilroy’s aesthetics are expressive and amusing without being self-satisfied, and Pascal’s turn as Alex is similarly natural and unassertive. With a stoic countenance that’s at once despondent and confident, Alex drifts through his days and nights with a nonchalance that borders on detachment.
It’s no surprise, then, that his past romance in Dallas with violinist Nadia (Sorry, Baby’sEva Victor) commences with him exuding effortless cool and concludes with her spitting, “It must be so nice to not give a s–t.”
Alex is a former child prodigy who once wowed audiences on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show, but the expertly suppressed discomfort he feels about that history fits his general remoteness and lack of investment in anything or anyone. The cellist’s sharp, smart retorts are a prime source of Behemoth!’s wit, with Gilroy’s script gifting Pascal with one tellingly curt line after another.
Nonetheless, neither filmmaker nor star softens his less pleasant aspects, even as they gradually reveal his cold, hostile upbringing with a show business father and mother (JoBeth Williams) who, when not ignoring or mistreating their children, chose to use them as “props.”
Gilroy’s writing is top-notch in Behemoth!—every action carries penetrating weight, and every sidewise comment resounds with profound meaning—and his direction is equally assured. Leaping backward and forward in time like a sonata that revisits bedrock themes and movements in different variations, he draws underlying connections (and heightens ragged contradictions) without saying a word.
His evocative and slippery storytelling is epitomized by Alex’s attendance at Nadia’s funeral, during which he gazes with surprise and awe at a piano performance by his ex’s eight-year-old daughter Vivian (Alexa Swinton), and a slow zoom into close-up and Pascal’s subtle eye squints—signs of his powerful engagement with the piece and its composer—convey everything one needs to know about the moment.
Behemoth! operates, to some extent, as a memory piece, and yet that doesn’t interfere with its immediacy. From an impromptu (if, given his nature, predictable) dalliance with a former flame (Kaya Ralls) to an unexpected middle-of-the-street run-in with Carol in front of the aspiring cellist he’s prepping for an audition, Alex is at once adrift and, courtesy of a tremendous Pascal, intensely present.
That contrast is reflected in a score—by a who’s who of greats: James Newton Howard, Alan Silvestri, Brandon Roberts, Michael Abels, Emily Bear, Lukas Frank, Michael Giacchino, Henry Jackman, and Nami Melumad—that surges and sinks with moving elegance. Better still, by simultaneously functioning as both a component of the narrative and an aesthetic device, that music becomes a binding force inside and outside the movie, tethering Alex to his today and yesterday and us to his up-and-down plight.
Gilroy elicits fantastic work from his entire cast, whether they’re scarily comical (Wilde), pitifully desperate and bitter (Arnett), or horrifyingly ugly (Azaria). And in its closing stanzas, Behemoth! reveals itself to be a saga about a wayward talent who, following decades of disappointment, wasted chances, and failures to fully live up to expectations (in art, family, and love), stumbles upon a small shot at personal redemption.
The sorrowful way in which that plays out is in sync with a film that recognizes life as a tangled, tattered tapestry of good and bad, optimism and regret, elation and despair, and the writer/director orchestrates it with a gentleness and sweetness that’s apt to bring both a tear to the eye and a smile to the face.
Behemoth! recognizes that radical reinventions are rare; as Alex tells his pupil, the best anyone can do is pick a lane and stick to it. With his polished, poignant big-screen comeback, Gilroy does just that and delivers a character study that’s richly and rewardingly alive.
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