I was a classical musician growing up, so I’m probably more inclined than most to love a movie set in the world of classical music. On the other hand, this might mean that I set a higher bar for originality when it comes to portraying him. There is no doubt that the reigning masterpiece of cinema in classical music drama is “Tár”; A great movie among many. other This remains only one dimension of it. But Todd Field lived in that world and allowed the audience to do so in a way no director before had done. Two other movies that carry the deep classical music truth come to mind: “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” which beautifully captures the experience of studying music in high school, and “Maestro,” which is a movie I may have enjoyed more than the others, even though it left out a ton about Leonard Bernstein (like the heart of his conducting career in the 50s and 60s!) because I filled them in instinctively.
On that scale, Tony Gilroy’s drama about a professional cellist, played with lively mystery by Pedro Pascal, “Behemoth!” scores on the level of originality. Pascal’s character, Alex Serian, a famous musician, has been a member of various world-class symphony orchestras, primarily in Chicago, but the film gives us a more contemporary perspective on such a career. In the new era, orchestras are going out of business, salaries aren’t what they used to be, and even a virtuoso string musician might need a side gig or two. For Alex, this meant playing in orchestras assembled to record film scores; a big industry and “Behemoth!” showing that it is almost as high maintenance as the prestige symphony circuit.
The conductors who oversee the recording of soundtracks are portrayed as overly demanding corporate perfectionists. (One of them, a prima donna played by Thomas Kretschmann, makes you feel like you’re seeing Klaus Kinski working for Skydance.) And in the film’s opening scene, which draws us into the language of rehearsal, a mix of old-school classical European directives (“pianissimo”) and Hollywood jargon (“new ink”), we’re right there in a huge recording studio, feeling the warmth and nuance.
My biggest pet peeve in classical music movies is that characters who are supposed to play the violin or cello almost never look real; You can see from a mile away that they are fake, imitating finger and bow movements like crude pantomimes. Tony Gilroy solved this problem in the most decisive way possible: he taught Pedro Pascal to play the cello. It’s actually Pascal doing this, so everything about his movements, from the vibrato to the bow to the way he moves his head, looks real. This commitment works for the film. It makes us feel that Alex’s talent is as real as a professional athlete or a star chef. Virtuousness is the air he breathes. Not every orchestra player is a virtuoso, of course, but from what we learn, Alex was a child prodigy from a strong musical family (we see a clip of him playing Bach as a 6-year-old on “The Tonight Show”). This is his pedigree and also his problem because the family madness destroyed him.
In addition to presenting the musical demo with respectful accuracy, “Behemoth!” There’s another thing about this: The movie is entertaining. This is not a symphony, it’s a scherzo. This is only the fourth feature film Gilroy has directed (his first since 2012’s “The Bourne Legacy”), but his enthusiasm for the filmmaking process is clear, starting with “Andor,” the “Star Wars” television series he created and for which he was the showrunner. Throughout most of the film, Alex practices a soundtrack session and Gilroy introduces a diabolical device: We see and hear the orchestra recording a note (the music can be suspenseful, romantic, pensive), until seconds later it’s “Behemoth!” itself. I’m not really sure I can say what this slightly meta gamble accomplishes, but it’s clever and fun. Gilroy got the least nine invites acclaimed film composers to contribute their talents to the film (they include James Newton Howard and Alan Silvestri and are referred to as the Behemoth! Collective). But he could easily have pulled off the same trick with a single composer.
Jumping through time, Gilroy draws us into Alex’s world with an enthusiastic wink at the evil of his behavior. Alex is trying to recover from a fling with Carol, the wife of one of the Chicago orchestra’s wealthy patrons; She’s played here by Olivia Wilde, who exudes such intense perverted energy that we’re not quite sure how to react. Alex remains calm, and Pascal more or less does so throughout the film. Even though Alex’s life is shattered, he is somehow the eye of the storm; Everyone around him is crazier than him. With his elegant mustache and perfectly gelled hair falling down to his forehead, Pedro Pascal has never looked so dashing; he’s like a dapper Burt Reynolds, or perhaps a passive Brando. Between his classic moves and flashy looks, women fall in love with Alex, but he’s a performer who drifts, drinks and flirts his way through life, always ready to move on to the next woman, the next city and the next gig. A frictionless life that he enjoys. But something has to give.
Gilroy seems impressed by the elliptical quality of “Tár,” although it isn’t always to good effect. I enjoyed “Behemoth!”’s cut-and-paste chronology to a point, but it has a flaw: The actors look the same in every scene, so some of it is confusing — like the episode in Dallas where Alex meets star violinist Nadia (Eva Victor), who seems to be his rival. They sleep together. But then, after a tense phone call with the billionaire who wants to marry her, she lashes out at Alex (who hasn’t done anything wrong), and we’re not sure where this is going or why. A few scenes later, tragedy struck. So did all these events happen one after the other or years apart? We get it, but Gilroy should have made it easier to read.
After breaking up with Wilde’s clingy diva in Chicago, Alex returns to Los Angeles, where he grew up. He can and does do session work there. He still seems mellow, but he’s driven by his pet obsession: listening to original avant-garde pop compositions posted online by 15-year-old Viviana (Alexa Swinton), who has become a local celebrity. It turns out that he has a connection with her; She is Nadia’s daughter. But why is he so interested? It’s just… there’s a feeling.
Alex’s brother, a talented but disorganized podcaster named Will Arnett, wrote “Is This Thing On?” He’s portrayed with a self-doubt that’s more interesting than anything else about his character in the film. We begin to piece together Alex’s troubled family life through their conversations – but here Pascal once again suffers so calmly that we’re left wanting more. The film finally culminates in a masterfully staged suspense sequence in which Alex, pretending to be a caterer’s assistant, sneaks into Nadia’s stone mansion, finds what he’s looking for, and then has to sneak out. The music playing underneath all this is naturally the “film soundtrack”.
After all, what is “Behemoth!” other than a movie with a dismally bad name? (You can’t remember it. You can’t pronounce it. And it’s hard to say exactly what it means or why it has an exclamation point—though of course it’s the name of one of the movies for which Alex helped score the score.) “Behemoth!” A midlife crisis movie. A classical musician movie. A light romantic mystery. Tony Gilroy is dealing with the pure film form. (He’s a canny orchestrator of on-screen storytelling.) But 19 years after “Michael Clayton,” he’s still searching for a subject that will allow him to do what he so masterfully did in that film: elevate our perceptions of the world along with our emotions until they become whole.