Review: ‘Behemoth!’ is a whole lot of nothing — until it isn’t

They say movies are supposed to make us feel less alone. But for the first 110 minutes of Tony Gilroy’s Behemoth!, that’s all I wanted to be. 

Arriving nearly 20 years after the filmmaker’s last feature film Michael Clayton, Behemoth! spends the majority of its time following a handsome cellist named Alex (played by Pedro Pascal) simply go about his life. Rehearsing, gigging, reconnecting with his family, recovering from a car accident, navigating the labyrinth of women he can’t seem to escape. It was like watching James Bond do everything and nothing, attending to the monotony of life between assignments. Elegant, sure, but not particularly cinematic.

Shallow was a word that came to mind. What was I (or anyone who doesn’t look like Pedro Pascal) supposed to take away from watching a privileged man fumble through life, only to softly land on the world’s most prestigious stages and in the arms of beautiful women? Turns out, this was the very question plaguing our protagonist from the beginning. 

Shallow was right, but he knew it, too. And like anyone with a conscience in the latter half of their life, Alex turned inward, grasping for meaning (and one very fateful toothbrush) in a timeline otherwise marked by childhood trauma and futile accolades and indulgence.

The final 10 minutes deliver a, yes, behemoth emotional gut-punch. One that, had it not been for the monotony that preceded it, may not have hit as hard. The film, like life, isn’t a series of highlights—it’s a guy going about his life like the rest of us, wondering what it’ll all mean in the end. And the answer it delivers is enough to propel you into the world with a renewed sense of hope and purpose, feeling all kinds of ways, but certainly not alone.