Behemoth! Film Review: Waiting to Be Seen

With different timelines connected by music and memory, Tony Gilroy’s Behemoth! tells the heartbreakingly human story of a man who spends most of his life waiting to be seen.

At times, you’ll even struggle to understand who all these characters are and what they mean to Alex, a third-generation musician who has just returned to Los Angeles after twenty years of playing in symphony orchestras in various cities, and accepted a job in a scoring studio. As the recording sessions begin, familiar music cues evoke key figures from Alex’s past, whom we meet in nonlinear fashion, just as they appear to our protagonist in his head.

There’s the angry, obsessive Carol (Olivia Wilde, of The Invite), a former flame who keeps following him around just to throw more insults at him, leading to increasingly bizarre encounters. There’s brilliant violinist Nadia (Eva Victor, of Sorry, Baby), with whom Alex had a relationship before she broke it off to marry a billionaire. Alex’s father, successful French horn player-turned-composer Peter (Hank Azaria, of The Electric State), often appears in videos: our cellist owes his father a career that was born more out of his father’s dissatisfaction than his own ambitions as a child prodigy.

Alex has an older brother, the hilariously self-absorbed Andrew (Will Arnett, of Is This Thing On?), who often intrudes on his past and present. The opposite can be said for Alex’s mother, incredibly successful harpist Ginnie Serian (JoBeth Williams), who’s still alive but only barely so, her memory of her son completely gone. It’s for Ginnie that Alex has returned to LA – at least, that’s what he tells himself.

As the movie unfolds, all of these characters overlap in Alex’s memory, and it’s hard to keep track of what happened when, and why all these past events should matter for our protagonist in the present. But Behemoth! is only deceptively aimless; just like the Alex’s own piece of advice, the movie “comes alive” when he himself makes a decision, and even if that choice comes at the very end of the film, it’s one that will make you rethink everything you’ve seen up till that point.

It all has to do with another child prodigy whom Alex first encounters at Nadia’s funeral. There, the six-year-old plays a requiem on the piano that will haunt him for many years, burned into his memory in an almost familiar way that he won’t understand till much later. And the moment that realization comes is when Behemoth! delivers its potent, unmistakable message, and you’ll finally understand what the film is about. Beneath an initially confusing narrative structure lies the much simpler story of a man who spends his entire life following a path laid out for him by the dysfunctional expectations of others, his talent recognized and even acclaimed yet his needs completely unnoticed.

Since Alex is very good at performing, he’s been playing that role to perfection; when we meet him, he’s gotten used to navigating life by going through the motions without really experiencing anything. But then, something happens: somebody sees him – the most unlikely of people, yet also the one who matters the most. Just like that, nothing else matters, and Alex allows himself to feel. Within seconds, we witness this character we’ve grown to really care about not only understand what it means to find kinship and connection, but make a conscious decision to do something altruistic – something that hurts him immensely but might just give the other person a chance to have a better life than the one he had.

There’s a scene in the movie when something else shifts in Alex, who’s finally able to experience grief, not only for what and whom he lost but also for what he never had. That moment, and the film as a whole, work so well thanks to Pedro Pascal, who effortlessly inhabits this complex character, first winning us over with pure, magnetic charm and then breaking our hearts with emotion at its rawest, often conveyed through his eyes alone. From The Mandalorian and The Last of Us to Materialists and Eddington, we’ve seen Pascal excel in many different projects, yet this is, without a doubt, the defining role of his career.

The rest of the cast excels too, with memorable performances no matter how limited their screen time. Will Arnett and Olivia Wilde are fantastic and will make you laugh throughout with their wonderfully improbable appearances, delivered to perfection. In a more subtle yet just as important role, Eva Victor impresses as Nadia. In her film debut, real-life classical cellist Kaya Ralls is splendid, making one of the few relationships that mean something to Alex even more meaningful with her earnest portrayal of Bronte. In a scene best left unspoiled, Alexa Swinton is magnetic as Viviana. As two very different kinds of composers, Zlatko Buric and Thomas Kretschmann shine.

Since writer-director Tony Gilroy wanted distinct soundtracks for each of the projects that Alex works on in the movie, Behemoth! was scored by nine different composers: Michael Giacchino (Up), Henry Jackman (Captain Phillips), Alan Silvestri (Back to the Future), Emily Bear (Our Little Secret), Brandon Roberts (A Quiet Place), Michael Abels (Get Out), James Newton Howard (Michael Clayton), Nami Melumad (Thor: Love and Thunder), and Lukas Frank (East of Wall). The choice pays off, as not only does the film feel more authentic but the music itself helps connect Alex to key moments in his life, with the sound perfectly integrated into the narrative. James Newton Howard particularly impresses as the composer of Viviana’s haunting original music, including a key piece performed by the orchestra and two more intimate moments that act as catalysts for Alex and Viviana’s relationship.

Behemoth! demands a lot of the audience, waiting until the very end to deliver an incredibly rewarding, affecting moment that will make you see everything that came before in a different light. If you let the film take you there without asking too many questions, simply experiencing its protagonist’s fragmented life as it’s shown, you’ll witness the movie come alive in poignant, unexpected ways. Anchored by a phenomenal Pedro Pascal and superb technical execution, Behemoth! is a stunning gem of a movie, and it’s not to be missed.

Behemoth! was screened at the BFI London Film Festival on October 13-16, 2026. The film will be released globally in theaters on December 4, 2026.