There’s a scene in Behemoth! — which premiered worldwide at New York Film Festival on Friday, October 2 — in which Pedro Pascal‘s character, a cellist, bullies his way into a studio job that, according to his agent, was looking to hire women.

“Fuck that,” Pascal fires back. His agent gets him the gig.

Granted, Pascal’s character had a good, not-sexist reason for wanting that job, which I won’t spoil here. But this casual use of male privilege at the expense of, presumably, some woman cellist, is ironic. Because Behemoth! — for all it’s gorgeous music and loving details — pushes its women to the sidelines.

Written and directed by Tony Gilroy (who is Oscar-nominated for his 2007 legal thriller film Michael Clayton, but is perhaps best known these days as the creator and showrunner of the critically-acclaimed Star Wars series, Andor) Behemoth! stars Pascal as Alex Serian, a renowned cellist who returns to his hometown, Los Angeles, to care for his ailing mother. Or at least, that’s why he tells people he’s back. Though he’s been playing orchestras all over the country, he takes a less-prestigious gig as a studio musician for Hollywood film scores.

Gilroy constructs the movie like a puzzle, flitting between locations and years by using subtle, effective mise-en-scené indicators (a snowstorm for Chicago, palm trees for LA, a Hillary Clinton yard sign for 2016) rather than text on screen. It takes a long time to get a read on who this Alex Serian guy is, really. Slowly, the details of his past life come into focus in the present-day. But even when we finally learn what Alex Serian wants, it’s still not clear what he needs.

Alex is a genius cello player, and also a bit of a player with women. His ex-girlfriend, Carol (a severely underutilized Olivia Wilde, especially glaring given early Oscar buzz for her stand-out performance in The Invite) is stalking him. In a flashback to Alex’s life in Chicago, Carol stomps after him in a gorgeous silk dress and fierce raccoon eyeliner — sleek, straightened hair swishing with every step — while he escapes out the back of the auditorium. She shows up at his house in the middle of the night, screaming obscenities at the neighbors, promising to leave her husband for him in one breath and calling him a pathetic loser in the next. She stands in the middle of a raging snow storm and screams “ALEX!” at the top her lungs, while he flees in a cab.

Wilde makes the most of the part, earning some of the biggest laughs at my screening. I laughed along with everyone else, hoping — right up until the credits began to roll — that Gilroy would give me something, anything, to make her character just a teensy bit more than “crazy ex-girlfriend”comic relief. But in the end, she that’s all she ever is. By the time the last Carol joke lands — presented with comedic fervor by Will Arnett, who plays Alex’s less-talented musician brother — I didn’t feel like laughing anymore.

Then there’s Eva Victor, who snagged an upset Best Actress Golden Globe last year for their directorial debut Sorry, Baby, in which they also starred. Victor appears in exactly three, too-short scenes in the movie as Nadia, a violinist, and another of Alex’s exes. As they were in Sorry, Baby, Victor is warm, funny, and relatable, and also sharp, cutting, and caustic. Nadia tells Alex he loves “crazy” because “crazy makes it easy for you. You’re off the hook, you’re blameless.”

This fascinating observation could have been a set-up for character growth (or a decision not to grow), but the movie never returns to it. Though it’s impossible to say why without spoiling the film, Victor’s character, like Wilde’s, becomes another sexist cliché.

As Alex, Pascal finds way to let audiences into his enigmatic character. That Pascal learned to play cello in a way that (to my eyes, at least) looked effortless, is no doubt impressive. But some of his best moments on screen involve no bow-handling and no dialogue — just listening, emoting, as Alex is impacted by a powerful piece of music. In one of the film’s stand-out scenes, Pascal’s eyes shine with fascination, awe, and utter disbelief as a six-year-old piano prodigy plays a song she composed for her late mother.

The non-linear storytelling of Behemoth! is compelling, particularly when the score blurs between diegetic and non-diegitic, cutting back to Alex in the LA-based studio, recording the very song that is currently setting the scene for a flashback. Gilroy worked with nine (nine!) different composers (James Newton Howard, Alan Silverstri, Michael Abels, Emily Bear, Lukas Frank, Michael Giacchino, Henry Jackman, and Nami Melumad) offering audiences a smorgasbord of musical styles, rather than one consistent vibe. As a celebration of all kinds of orchestrated music, it’s quite effective.

There are things to like about Behemoth!, if you’re willing to overlook the ways it fails both Wilde and Victor. It’s very nice to look at, in addition to being very nice to listen to. Ultimately, though, Behemoth! is a character study that never gives us a clear view of the character it’s studying. For me, that’s not enough to forgive its transgressions.

Behemoth! will be in limited theaters starting Friday, December 4, 2026.