Behemoth! is Tony Gilroy’s feature about Alex Serian, a cellist played by Pedro Pascal. Alex returns to Los Angeles after two decades on the road and goes back to work on film-score recordings. Searchlight credits The Behemoth! Collective for the music.
What Alex does in the story
AFI Fest’s programme describes Alex as a former child prodigy who leaves his orchestra in Chicago and returns to familiar recording work in Los Angeles. He is a fictional musician inside a film about what that work has meant to him. Pascal’s role and Alex’s return make a clearer film identifier than the word Behemoth on its own.
For a viewer looking for a story about a musician’s working life, the film-score sessions are a useful part of the setup. Alex earns a living playing music that will accompany other stories while reconsidering what his own commitment to playing has cost him. That relationship between work and personal life is a better guide to the feature’s premise than its title’s size or punctuation.
Two different questions about the music
A scene can show Alex playing or working with other musicians. The music can also function as the score the audience hears around a scene. AFI Fest describes the film as moving between those two uses. If you are discussing a piece of music, say where in the story it occurs and whether you are asking about the character’s work or the film’s score.
The Behemoth! Collective is the score credit. AFI Fest names nine composers, including Emily Bear, Nami Melumad and Brandon Roberts. Use the collective’s full name when looking up the score. Use Tony Gilroy and Alex Serian when you want the feature, whose full title includes the exclamation mark.