\n\tI was a classical musician growing up, so I\u2019m probably more disposed than most to like a movie set in the classical-music world. Then again, that could mean that I set a higher bar for authenticity when it comes to depicting it. There\u2019s no doubt that the cinema\u2019s reigning masterpiece of classical-music drama is \u201cT\u00e1r\u201d \u2014\u00a0a great movie in so many other ways that that remains only one dimension of it. But Todd Field inhabited that world, and allowed the audience to do so, in a way that no previous director had. Two other films leap to mind that have the ring of deep-dish classical-music reality: \u201cMr. Holland\u2019s Opus,\u201d which beautifully caught the experience of studying music in high school, and \u201cMaestro,\u201d a movie I may have enjoyed more than others, even though it left out a ton of stuff about Leonard Bernstein (like, for instance, the heart of his conducting career in the \u201950s and \u201960s!), because I instinctively filled all of that in.<\/p>\n
\n\tViewed on that scale, \u201cBehemoth!<\/a>,\u201d Tony Gilroy<\/a>\u2019s drama about a professional cellist, played with perky mystery by Pedro Pascal<\/a>, scores on the level of authenticity. Pascal\u2019s character, a renowned musician named Alex Serian, has been a member of various world-class symphony orchestras, notably in Chicago, but the film presents us with a more plugged-in contempo angle on this kind of career. In the new era, orchestras are foundering, the pay isn\u2019t what it used to be, and even a virtuoso string musician might need a side gig or two. For Alex, that has meant playing in orchestras that are assembled to record movie scores \u2014 a major industry, and one that \u201cBehemoth!\u201d depicts as being nearly as high maintenance as the prestige symphony circuit.<\/p>\n \n\tThe conductors who oversee the recording of the movie scores are portrayed as hyper-demanding corporate perfectionists. (One of them, a prima donna played by Thomas Kretschmann, makes it feel like you\u2019re seeing Klaus Kinski going to work for Skydance.) And from the film\u2019s opening scene, which immerses us in the lingo of rehearsal, which is a mixture of old-school classical Euro directives (\u201cpianissimo\u201d) and Hollywood jargon (\u201cnew ink\u201d), we\u2019re right there in the cavernous recording studio, feeling the heat and the nuance.<\/p>\n \n\tMy all-time pet peeve in classical-music films is that characters who are supposed to be playing the violin or cello almost never look real \u2014 you can see from a mile away that they\u2019re faking it, imitating the finger and bow movements like crude mimes. Tony Gilroy has solved this problem in the most committed way possible: He had Pedro Pascal learn to play the cello. That\u2019s really Pascal doing it, which is why everything about his motions looks real, from the vibrato to the bowing to the way he moves his head. That devotion works for the film. It allows us to feel that Alex is as genuine in his talent as a professional athlete or a star chef. Virtuosity is the air he breathes. Not every orchestra player is a virtuoso, of course, but Alex, we learn, was a child prodigy who came from a high-powered musical family (we see a clip of him playing Bach as a 6-year-old on \u201cThe Tonight Show\u201d). That\u2019s his pedigree, and it\u2019s also his problem, since the family craziness has messed him up.<\/p>\n \n\tIn addition to presenting its musical demimonde with reverent accuracy, \u201cBehemoth!\u201d has another quality going for it: The film is playful. It\u2019s not a symphony \u2014 it\u2019s a scherzo. This is only the fourth feature Gilroy has directed (it\u2019s his first since \u201cThe Bourne Legacy\u201d in 2012), but coming off the \u201cStar Wars\u201d television series \u201cAndor,\u201d which he created and was the showrunner for, he makes his enthusiasm for the filmmaking process palpable. For most of the film, Alex is doing movie-score session work, and Gilroy introduces an impish device: We see and hear the orchestra recording a score (the music might be suspenseful, romantic, pensive), until seconds later it becomes the score of \u201cBehemoth!\u201d itself. I\u2019m not honestly sure I can say what this slightly meta gambit accomplishes, but it\u2019s clever and fun. Gilroy got no less than nine acclaimed film composers to contribute their talents to the movie (they include James Newton Howard and Alan Silvestri and are billed as the Behemoth! Collective). But he could easily have executed the exact same trick with just one composer.<\/p>\n \n\tLeaping around in time, Gilroy draws us into Alex\u2019s world with an effervescent wink at the badness of his behavior. Alex is wriggling out of a fling with Carol, the wife of one of the Chicago orchestra\u2019s wealthy patrons \u2014 she\u2019s played by Olivia Wilde, who radiates such intense stalker energy here that we\u2019re not quite sure how to react. Alex just keeps calm, and that\u2019s what Pascal does, more or less, throughout the movie. Alex\u2019s life is falling apart, yet somehow he\u2019s the eye of the storm; everyone around him is screwier than he is. With an elegant mustache and perfect gelled hair that dips down onto his forehead, Pedro Pascal has never looked more dashing \u2014 he\u2019s like a refined Burt Reynolds, or maybe a passive Brando. Between his classical chops and his glamorous looks, women drop for Alex, but he\u2019s an artist who has drifted through life, drinking and having flings, always ready to move on to the next woman and the next city and the next gig. It\u2019s a frictionless life he revels in. But something\u2019s got to give.<\/p>\n \n\tGilroy seems to have been influenced by the elliptical quality of \u201cT\u00e1r,\u201d though not always to good effect. I enjoyed, to a point, the cut-and-paste chronology of \u201cBehemoth!,\u201d but there\u2019s a flaw in it: The actors look identical in every scene, so some of it is confusing \u2014 like the episode in Dallas where Alex meets Nadia (Eva Victor), a star violinist who seems his match. They sleep together. But then, after a fraught phone conversation with the billionaire who wants to marry her, she lashes out at Alex (who has done nothing wrong), and we\u2019re not sure where this is going or why. A few scenes later, tragedy has struck. But did all these events happen one after another or years apart? We figure it out, but Gilroy should have made it easier to read.<\/p>\n