Tony Gilroy’s “Behemoth!” is a deliberately elusive character study about memory, music and the difficulty of finding one’s own rhythm. Starring Pedro Pascal as a troubled cellist, the film takes a much smaller and stranger approach than its imposing title might suggest.
The film follows Alex Sarian, a talented but emotionally detached cellist who returns to Los Angeles after spending two decades away. He begins working as a session musician on various film scores, a job that unexpectedly reconnects him with memories of relationships and choices he has tried to leave behind.
Rather than following a conventional dramatic structure, Gilroy builds the film around music and memory. Different compositions trigger fragments from Alex’s past, allowing the story to move fluidly between different periods of his life.
Music becomes a gateway to the past
While recording percussion for a chase sequence in an action comedy, Alex is transported back to a winter night in Chicago, when he was involved with a married woman played by Olivia Wilde. A romantic piece he performs for another film takes him back to a passionate relationship with a violinist, played by Eva Victor, during his time in Dallas.
Elsewhere, a session for the fictional blockbuster “Behemoth!” is intercut with Alex breaking into a mansion to obtain a toothbrush for a DNA test. The sequence turns an otherwise strange personal episode into something resembling a “Mission: Impossible” set piece.
As these memories accumulate, a pattern begins to emerge. Alex repeatedly becomes involved with strong but emotionally unavailable women, only to retreat when relationships threaten to become permanent.
His talent is undeniable. A former child prodigy and third-generation musician, Alex was performing on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” at just six years old. Yet he has always been uncomfortable with attention and has spent much of his life avoiding the spotlight.
Pedro Pascal keeps the character deliberately restrained
Pascal gives an understated performance, resisting the temptation to explain Alex’s complicated relationship with music, money and his family.
His father viewed film scoring largely through its financial rewards, while Alex appears increasingly uncomfortable with his own position as a Hollywood session musician. Every rehearsal is effectively another audition, and the films he works on seem to value him only as much as the next job requires.
His family relationships add another layer to his uncertainty. His brother, played by Will Arnett, is a struggling podcaster, while his mother, portrayed by JoBeth Williams, suffers from dementia. Alex also reconnects with an old friend, played by Margarita Levieva.
Rather than neatly connecting these elements, Gilroy allows them to exist as fragments of a life that does not fit comfortably into a conventional Hollywood narrative.
A film about finding your own tempo
“Behemoth!” uses film music less as an emotional tool than as a way of exploring how people move through time. Alex has spent his life following the conductor, waiting for the next cue, but eventually he must learn to find his own tempo.
That idea is reflected in the film’s structure. Its narrative is deliberately loose, moving between memories without always explaining how one experience leads to another.
Gilroy, best known for creating “Andor” and directing films including “Michael Clayton” and “Duplicity,” returns to the big screen for the first time in 14 years with a film that refuses to follow the expected conventions of either a Hollywood drama or a traditional music movie.
The result is an unconventional and sometimes frustrating film, but one that gradually reveals its emotional purpose. Its final stretch delivers a particularly affecting moment in which music, memory and Alex’s sense of identity finally come together.
“Behemoth!” ultimately becomes less a film about the power of movie scores than a story about one man trying to understand the soundtrack of his own life. It may take its time finding its rhythm, but Gilroy’s film eventually delivers on the promise of its unusually large title with a quiet emotional force.
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