There’s a handful of films premiering this fall that seem loaded with potential, whether due to the filmmaker attached and/or the story being told. I’m thinking Alejandro Iñárritu’s “Digger,” David Fincher’s ‘Cliff Booth,’ Joel Coen’s “Jack of Spades,” and this one …
A test screening of Tony Gilroy’s “Behemoth!” occurred on Monday night, and the film has garnered very positive reactions—easily imaginable as an Oscar contender. We’ll see how it goes as an October/November release is being eyed for this one.
“Behemoth!” plays like a character-driven, formally ambitious fifteen-year chronicle of cellist Alex Serian, who moves back to Los Angeles and decides to compose music for films. The story explores why he left and why he returned, unfolding through a nonlinear, music-driven structure. The entire film is shaped by musical cues that trigger flashbacks spanning the last 20 years.
Gilroy reportedly hired a staggering seven composers to work on the film, including James Newton Howard (“The Hunger Games”) and Alan Silvestri (“Back to the Future,” “Forrest Gump”). There is no word yet on the other five contributors.
What makes the film especially distinctive is its structure: it continually cuts between the orchestra and the protagonist’s real life. The score is not just accompaniment—it functions as an active narrative layer, almost as if the character is simultaneously watching a version of his own life while also composing and conducting its most pivotal moments.
It’s a conceptually bold approach in which music becomes inseparable from storytelling, and it’s easy to imagine the film premiering at the Venice Film Festival this fall, where Gilroy’s “Michael Clayton” also debuted 19 years ago.
“Behemoth!” is described as an extremely talky, low-plot character drama centered on Alex, a gifted but emotionally empty cellist who drifts through orchestras over two decades while cycling through affairs with women who become attached to him even as he remains detached and restless. The one relationship that seems to matter is with Nadia, a longtime lover who later dies, prompting Alex to reconnect with people from her life in the present-day timeline. Parallel to all this, he’s hired to score a movie despite being past his professional peak.
Based on how it was described to me, this is less a plot-driven story than a portrait of narcissism, aging, sex, memory, and artistic emptiness, told through long conversations and emotional drift rather than major events. The film also apparently has a great ending.
Pedro Pascal’s performance as Alex is said to be stellar; he plays a moody figure whose inability to separate his professional and personal lives causes him to unravel. Olivia Wilde appears as the ex-girlfriend. The cast also includes Eva Victor, Alexa Swinton, Will Arnett, and Matthew Lillard.
It’s worth noting that Gilroy launched his directing career with one of the strongest debuts of the 21st century, “Michael Clayton” (2007), followed by two less successful films, “Duplicity” (2009) and “The Bourne Legacy” (2012). “Behemoth!” marks his first film in 14 years, arriving four years after his major commercial and critical success with the Disney+ series “Andor.”