How long does it take to work through one’s upbringing and create one’s own identity? Can one ever get off the train of unreconciled emotions and take control instead of playing the passive voyeur? Writer/director Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton) answers these questions by investigating Alex Serian’s (Pedro Pascal) life in Behemoth!. The comedic drama made its World Premiere as the Centerpiece film at the 64th NYFF.

With a superb performance that only Pascal can give, Behometh! draws in its audience with vignettes scored by nine of the industry’s stellar composers. Uniquely constructed like a symphony with movements, the film explores seminal moments in the cellist’s familial and romantic life. Each composer scores a different vignette/scene. Threaded together the scenes represent dramatic turning points key to Alex’s emotional upheaval in a flashback retrospective. Cleverly, Gilroy intercuts these events with Alex’s present. In a fascinating twist, the music, like a defining character, reveals Alex’s emotional and mental state during the various vignettes.

Initially, Gilroy shows Alex in Los Angeles where he joins the orchestra on a sound stage and meets old friends to record Hollywood film scores. There, we discover he also must resolve family business because his mother has dementia and can’t adequately care for herself. In the present while Alex plays film scores, Alex flashes back to the past in his mind, his loves, family arguments, his regrets. Indeed, he attempts to reconcile his emotional angst through his vigorous playing. Ironically, the film the Hollywood orchestra scores syncs with events in Alex’s remembrances. In parallel when he plays the film scores, he superimposes them on his memories. In effect he scores his own life in Behemoth! whose title symbolizes not only himself but a new family member.

With care Gilroy intercuts Alex playing the exciting, dramatic, calm, frightening music from the film scores in the present with Alex’s chaotic past. Thus, Behemoth!’s narrative can’t be linear. It follows the music he plays as the engineers record the film scores on the LA soundstage and the remembered events his mind reconstructs. In the flashback vignettes/scenes, we learn why Alex escaped to LA. Alex left his position with an orchestra in Chicago to escape a disastrous affair with the obsessed wife of the orchestra’s philanthropist.

A terrific and terrifying Olivia Wilde stalks and haunts Alex in a masterful portrayal of a privileged woman who never takes “no”for an answer. With humor and horror, Wilde’s Alex-possessed character runs amuck to keep Alex as hers. Instead of pressing charges for her stalking, or getting a court order against her, Alex runs away, an ineffectual response. Gilroy has her unexpectedly pop up, sometimes with shock and awe. The accompanying music to the frantic scenes of Alex running from her and from other situations expresses his panic and fear. Gilroy’s rapid editing and close-ups of Alex/Pascal’s face as he escapes draw in the audience to his personal inner struggle.

During various flashbacks, we learn about Alex’s identity as a former child prodigy from an old video clip friends watch when he performed on the Johnny Carson show as a kid. Apparently, music centers his life but he lives in the shadow of a storied musical family. His emotional chaos has him travel as an itinerant cellist, escaping to different cities and women. Thus, this state distracts him from his true potential. His abilities, characterized by love Nadia Hynes (Eva Victor) as a ” monster,” he should realize. However, he doesn’t. Thus, Nadia packs up and leaves their relationship after calling him out for his passivity and unreliability. However, theirs turns out to be a key relationship which Gilroy reveals at the conclusion as a surprise.

During the collection of original music compositions for Behemoth!, we understand that the music accompanies and comments upon Alex’s desire for balance and peace from his torments. Additionally, it resonates with beauty, for Alex receives healing and redemption from the music that builds to an epiphany. The nine composers include Michael Giacchino, James Newton Howard, Michael Abels, Emily Bear, Lukas Frank, Henry Jackman, Nami Melumad, Brandon Roberts and Alan Silvestri. Additionally, NYFF 2026 featured excerpts from the score during intervals in festival moments.

Gilroy’s Behemoth! celebrates the power of music in a love letter to those who make music and uplift our souls. Recognizing the nine composers of the film, their work highlights an incredible score which should be nominated for awards. Additionally, the ensemble work by Eva Victor, Alexa Swinton, Will Arnett and others helps to make this unique, elegant film by Gilroy a standout.

Behemoth! will screen in select theaters beginning on December 4, 2026. For the NYFF schedule see possible release of tickets on their site https://www.filmlinc.org/nyff2026/films/behemoth/