‘Behemoth!’ Review: Pedro Pascal in Tony Gilroy’s Wan Character Study

Tony Gilroy returns to features after 14 years’ absence — the last three of them spent in the Star Wars TV trenches as creator, showrunner and head writer on Andor — with a movie that makes itself hard to love. Hampered by a fussy hopscotching time structure that too often halts the dramatic momentum and by a central character whose passivity fights against the warmth and magnetism of Pedro Pascal in the role, Behemoth! is an odd duck, alternately intriguing and frustrating. What it does have going for it is a series of thrilling sequences observing the workings of an orchestra employed on Hollywood’s scoring stages.

That rarely glimpsed milieu and a virtuoso cellist protagonist might make Gilroy’s film sound like Maestro meets Tár. But the story’s internal engine seldom revs hard enough to stand up to either of those comparisons, despite its capable ensemble cast and polished craftsmanship.

One issue is that the script by Gilroy (an Oscar nominee for screenwriting and direction on Michael Clayton) gives insufficient dimension to Pascal’s character, Alex Serian, for someone meant to carry a film. He’s a sideliner in his own life, which may well be the result of living in the shadow of a family of narcissists, but that is not enough to make him interesting. Nor does it help that Alex’s failed relationships seem less a symptom of his own damage than his poor choice of partners.

The women characters generally are not drawn kindly, especially Carol Spedding (Olivia Wilde), a wealthy, married arts patron whose ferocious pursuit of Alex when he ends their affair makes her seem like a soul sister to Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. Maybe Carol’s $6 million gift to the Chicago Symphony during Alex’s tenure there enables her to feel some kind of ownership, though that’s more implied than explored. “I bleed for you and you shun me?” screeches the manic drama queen after he blocks her calls.

Alex’s flight from scary Carol lands him back in his hometown, Los Angeles, after 20 years of playing in other cities, looking to get back into session work recording orchestral film scores. It’s in those scenes on studio lots — including the Barbra Streisand Scoring Studio at Sony — that the movie is most dynamic.

That’s in large part due to the staggering range of ravishing original film music we see being performed — from dark drama to suspense to action to soaring romance — written by an assembly of nine respected composers billed as “The Behemoth! Collective.” They include Michael Abels, Emily Bear, Lukas Frank, Michael Giacchino, James Newton Howard, Henry Jackman, Nami Melumad, Brandan Roberts and Alan Silvestri. Much of their work also plays over scenes elsewhere in the movie, including an art rock song, a requiem, a cartoon theme tune, a harp concerto and cello etudes.

For anyone who loves movies, being prompted to think about the experiential role that a great score plays is fascinating, but while Behemoth! feints toward being a celebration of film music, it never fully commits. It seems a missed opportunity that we don’t get to watch music being matched to specific beats on the screen, beyond background shots of fuzzy footage on a monitor.

Alex’s relationship with his parents was defined by their need to outshine their children. We see video of Alex playing Bach at age 6 on Johnny Carson’s show, but the film seems to suggest their nurturing of their sons’ musical gifts was just another way to burnish their own reputations.

His self-absorbed brother Andy (Will Arnett, who’s in a different movie) became something of a black sheep when he turned his back on classical viola to form a briefly successful rock band in the ‘90s. He now hosts a podcast about the TV and movie themes of their late father Peter (Hank Azaria, in a video cameo). Their mother Ginnie (an unrecognizable JoBeth Williams) was a renowned harpist, fading fast with dementia when Alex stays with her upon first returning to L.A. She once said of her husband, “He was a Peter who really wanted to be a Pierre.”

But those glimmers of insight fail to coalesce into a fleshed-out family mythology — though we do learn that Alex and Andy’s grandfather died from a stroke, immedicately after hitting a high C while playing trumpet on the same MGM stage where Alex now works. There’s simply not enough meat on the bones of the parental background or in Alex and Andy’s conversations about them to give much shape to the supposedly chaotic upbringing that formed them.

The movie is more engaged in Alex’s reflections on his own life in the two decades since he left, jumping between fizzled relationships and elite orchestra positions in Boston, Dallas and Chicago. The one woman he appears to have loved is brilliant violinist Nadia (Eva Victor), who bailed to marry a billionaire businessman (Matthew Lillard). Victor (Sorry, Baby) is a vivid screen presence, but Nadia isn’t around long enough to leave much of an impression before Alex’s memories jump to her funeral six years later.

It’s on that solemn occasion that he first sees Nadia’s prodigiously gifted daughter Viviana when she plays an original piano composition of astonishing maturity. That piques Alex’s curiosity about the possibility that he might be the girl’s father; his paternity sleuthing gives the movie a much-needed kick.

While Alex’s romantic past is too thinly outlined to be compelling, Pascal’s internalized performance becomes more affecting once the character’s paternal instincts emerge. This happens first with Bronte (Kaya Ralls), a bright young cellist he coaches for an audition with the prestigious San Francisco Symphony. (Professional musician Ralls is a natural in her first acting role.)

But it’s when he starts following Viviana’s success as a composer and musician across multiple genres that the film finally gains some emotional heft. An interlude during which their professional paths cross, when 15-year-old Viviana (Alexa Swinton, terrific) is hired to take over scoring duties on a major movie from a temperamental Euro-diva (Thomas Kretschmann, amusingly playing a male Lydia Tár), is lovely. But it comes too late in a movie that gives us few reasons to care about its opaque central character.

Behemoth! is handsomely shot by Damián García, who previously worked with Gilroy on Andor, but in the end it’s satisfying only as a sensory experience in which music acquires physical form, an aspect greatly enhanced by the advanced sound technology of Dolby Atmos.