PIG

Directing: A-
Acting: A-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

Nicolas Cage has now been in movies for forty years. Some of his earlier roles are legitimately iconic: Raising Arizona, Moonstruck, his Academy Award-winning role in the incredibly depressing Leaving Las Vegas. How long has it been since he had a role as memorable as those? Arguably, the 2002 masterpiece Adaptation. Even that was nearly two decades ago.

I won’t pretend to be intimately familiar with Cage’s filmography since then. The man has more than fifty film credits in the past twenty years alone, and I have seen maybe ten of those. Cage has widely become known to be an active parody of himself in recent years, which has left me comparatively disinterested. Which is to say, I can’t really say with objective authority that his performance in Pig is his best in twenty years—since Adaptation. But, I still suspect it to be true.

And this is the thing about Pig. If you go just by the premise, you might think it fits perfectly into Nicolas Cage’s late-career gonzo trajectory. It’s about a recluse in the forests outside Portland, Oregon, who goes in search of the people who kidnapped his truffle pig. Anyone familiar with Cage’s recent output who hears that might quite understandably expect something weird and over the top. Instead, Pig defies expectations in just about every way imaginable.

In fact, the less you know about it going in, the better. So what can I say about it, then? I’m tempted to call it “John Wick with a pig” just as a misdirect. Except, I will tell you this movie is not an action movie. It’s very much a drama, shot lovingly both in and around Portland, with layered themes that prove unexpectedly moving. One would never judge from the opening scenes, in which Rob and his pig are hunting truffle mushrooms, that it would somehow lead to a riveting scene in a fine dining establishment with Rob convincing the chef that he’s wasting his life on things for which he has no passion. I may want to rewatch this movie just for that scene alone.

Also, perhaps: a bit of a heads up. The pig itself gets very little screen time. So if you love pigs, keep that in mind. But don’t fret, either: no violence against the pig (or any animal) is ever depicted. You might think for a bit that Rob might be the perpetrator of some violence, but there’s none of that either. There are just the two scenes in which Rob gets beaten pretty badly by other people.

And this leads me to my one peeve about this movie: Cage, as Rob, spends the entire run time of the film not just in the same grimy outfit, but with his face beaten and crusted over with blood. I had a hard time getting past that. Sure, Rob has been a recluse for so long he no longer gives a shit about his appearance or what people think of him. But, he doesn’t even want to wash the blood off his face, even while visiting high end restaurants? This would feel slightly more plausible if, say, the people he visits regularly said something about his hygiene. Surely he smells horrid. A young man who buys the truffle mushrooms from him asks in an early scene if Rob is sure he doesn’t want some kind of shower installed in his cabin, and he is later asked if he needs medical attention, but that’s it. I found this far more distracting than director and co-writer Michael Sarnoski surely intended.

And don’t get me wrong, Cage is still plenty weird in this movie. It’s just not in the ways you might expect—and it’s still possibly the most understated performance he’s ever given. (In the aforementioned scene Rob shares with a chef, it’s the other actor—David Knell—who truly shines.) It’s Cage’s restraint that truly impresses, although he does let slip one small outburst that serves as one of the few truly funny moments in the movie.

Overall, Pig is meditative, existential, a rumination on grief and loss. Every principal character in this film has lost a person dear to them, and have taken their lives in different directions that can still all be traced back to that loss. Eventually, Adam Arkin shows up, in a scene in which we see how food can be used as a tool to trigger specific emotions and memories.

In other words, the truffle pig is just a jumping-off point. An unorthodox one, to be sure, but it also serves its purpose, making Pig one of the most memorably unique films to come along in years.

Is the pig a metaphor? Let’s discuss over wine.

Overall: B+