Pedro Pascal has survived a fungal apocalypse, protected Grogu and led the Fantastic Four. By his own account, none of it was as hard as the cello.
The actor stars in “Behemoth!,” Tony Gilroy’s drama about a gifted cellist, which had its world premiere Friday, Oct. 2, as the centerpiece selection of the 64th New York Film Festival. Pascal learned to play the instrument for the part, and the effort is already drawing notice from critics.
“It was the hardest thing that I’ve ever done creatively,” Pascal said at a festival press conference on premiere day, according to Gold Derby. Gilroy’s advice was to keep the cello with him everywhere, he said. “The cello was the main character of my life for the seven weeks leading up to shooting.” “You’re supposed to spend a year really learning how to really hold the bow correctly,” Pascal noted, “and I had a week!” Of lugging the instrument around Los Angeles, he joked, “It was hell and heaven.”
Gilroy said he gave Pascal a frank warning before formally offering him the role, likening their talk to “a three-hour prenup in a bar.” His verdict on the results: “His playing was super-clean.”
A life scored in flashbacks
Pascal plays Alex Serian, a former child prodigy from a family of Hollywood musicians who comes back to Los Angeles after 20 years away and takes session jobs recording movie scores. As he plays, the film jumps back through his past and a string of complicated romances. Olivia Wilde, Eva Victor, Will Arnett, Hank Azaria, JoBeth Williams and Alexa Swinton co-star.
“Behemoth!” is Gilroy’s fourth film as a director and his first since 2012’s “The Bourne Legacy.” In between, he created the acclaimed “Star Wars” series “Andor.” Gilroy said the idea took shape while he was finishing “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” where he watched a massive orchestra and a 100-voice choir at work. “I thought, ‘Man, why is there not a movie here?'” he said.
The story also draws on Gilroy’s own past. As a young musician in the 1970s, he tried to make it as a studio player before switching to screenwriting. “I realized, ‘I am not a studio musician,'” he said.
The score comes from nine film composers billed as The Behemoth! Collective, among them Michael Giacchino, an Oscar winner, plus Oscar nominees Alan Silvestri and James Newton Howard.
What critics are saying
Deadline’s Pete Hammond found Pascal “utterly convincing as this accomplished musician” and called the score “hands down the year’s best.”
Variety’s Owen Gleiberman, who wrote that he played classical music growing up, credited Gilroy with having Pascal actually learn the instrument, so that “everything about his motions looks real.” He was cooler on the storytelling, faulting a hopscotching chronology that can be hard to follow, and wrote that Pascal “suffers in such a placid way that we keep wanting more.”
Screen Daily called Pascal’s performance “terrific” but said the narrative “often succumbs to cliché and proves too fragmented” to leave a deep emotional mark.
Awards hopes
Searchlight Pictures, which is releasing the film, hopes to see the nine composers nominated together for the original score Oscar, though it remains unclear whether Academy rules will allow that, Gold Derby reported. The studio has also entered “Your God Is Sleeping,” a song written for the film, in the original song race.
Gold Derby’s best actor rankings currently place Pascal seventh, just outside the five nomination slots.
What’s next
Searchlight opens “Behemoth!” in U.S. theaters on Friday, Dec. 4. Before then, the film is headed to more festivals, including London, according to Screen Daily.
