Title: Pig Year: 2021 Genre: Drama, Thriller Country: USA, UK Language: English Director/Screenwriter: Michael Sarnoski based on the story by Michael Sarnoski and Vanessa Block Music: Alexis Grapsas, Philip Klein Cinematography: Patrick Scola Editing: Brett W. Bachman Cast: Nicolas Cage Alex Wolff Adam Arkin David Knell Darius Pierce Davis King Gretchen Corbett Rating: 7.2/10
Oscar-winner-turned-prolific-schlockmeister Nicolas Cage receives excellent notices from Michael Sarnoski debut feature PIG, a film about a reclusive truffle hunter who sets his sights on retrieving his stolen pig in the city of Portland. It may sound like a JOHN WICK-esque tale of a porcine pet, but PIG is anything but, minimal in action and a meditative study on loss, forbearance and Weltschmerz, it is also essentially a foodie’s film, because the protagonist Rob (Cage) is a renowned chef before morphing into a hermit dwelling in the woods, off the grid, with only his truffle-foraging pig for company. And believe it or not, it is a bespoke meal he prepares finally worms the pig’s whereabout out of Darius (Arkin), the man behind the theft. Rob is in the long line of American cinema’s taciturn, world-weary, aged men who forgo modern, gregarious life in favor of anonymity and solitude provided by nature, often in the wake of inconsolable bereavement, only to be grudgingly driven out of their habitat under unfortunate circumstances and then the past starts to catch up. Moreover, a requisite is that the man shouldn’t be a nobody, he must be a made man, whose glorious past makes his perverse choice more heroic for our appreciation, Rob is a museum piece, but his name still means something in Portland, a distant legend whose legacy hasn't completely fallen into oblivion. Tracing through paper trails, Rob touches base with several old acquaintances and takes a trip down memory lane when he revisits his erstwhile abode, before honing in on Darius, a city magnate whose son Amir (Wolff) is Rob’s supplier, and he doesn’t reckon Amir is cut it for the job, so as to demoralize the latter, he pays someone to abduct Rob’s dear pig. Darius’ motive sounds far-fetched, and there is a lacuna here, Sarnoski seems to be indecisive in scoping out Darius’ mentation, his love/hate relation with Amir is subsumed into Rob and Amir’s quasi-father-and-son rapport, which gels organically through its due process, and both Cage and Wolff live up to our expectation of modulating all the niceties. A bedraggled, bloated, blood-stained Cage (the film’s only violent burst is a masochistic punching bag sequence to underscore Rob’s thick hide and unbending tenacity) takes a man’s wounded pride in his stride, humility and humanity abounds around hum, he can also eloquently take the fig leave off the so-called “haute cuisine” which has become the emblem of hauteur and pretentiousness, only when there should be ire, he seems too cool to register it. Wolff, on the other side, opens up Amir’s damaged entrails more empathetically, squares away a rich kid’s blues with felicity. Neatly divided into 3 chapters and titled with gastronomic terms germane to the plot, PIG is a strangely benevolent shoestring indie film saturated in a pall of dun, but with a heart bigger than we initially think, Sarnoski is cunning enough to know what to omit and what to emphasize out of a trite story, plus, Joaquin Phoenix ought to endorse its deprecative stance on speciesism (“I love my pig and I don’t fuck her”). referential entries: Debra Granik’s LEAVE NO TRACE (2018, 8.2/10); Sean Penn’s INTO THE WILD (2007, 8.3/10).
Cinema Omnivore 