Movie Review : Pig (2021)
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Any film featuring Nicolas Cage comes with certain expectations in 2021. It needs to be a little ironic, self-reflexive and Cage needs to more or less be playing himself. He doesn’t have much of an on-screen identity anymore. His characters barely even have names. It’s just good old Nicolas Cage acting crazy and committing acts of terrible violence. Pig is not that kind of movie. It’s a movie where Nicolas Cage is so good i it, you almost forget he’s Nicolas Cage.
Pig tells the story of a truffle hunter named Rob (Cage), who makes a living by selling his produce to a young local supplier named Amir (Alex Wolff). One day, his foraging pigs gets stolen by two tweakers for unclear reasons. I know what you’re thinking here. That it’s some kind of John Wick style avenge-the-pig movie. But it isn’t. What happens in Pig is more akin to what real people who sincerely give a shit would do in such circumstances. and it’s great.
Less is more
Most artists I’ve met are obsessed with the idea of being deep. That it’s their job to elevate human spirit and improve society by making people more self-aware. It’s not a bad ambition to have as an artist, but it can be overwhelming and turn you into a parody of yourself. Pig is… well, a surprisingly simple and deep movie that seems to nail down the essence of what the term even means. It’s the story of a man who hasn’t quite given up on life yet.
Nicolas Cage’s character Rob left an entire part of himself behind, but his pig represents a duality that still lives inside him: Rob still loves the world. He still feels great attachment to nature, which is also translated by his various states of dirtiness. He is covered by blood and dirty in every frame of the movie. Rob used to sublime this love through cooking, but now he does through his relationship to his truffle pig. It’s his rampart against nihilism.
Violent, nihilistic pricks are usually boring. Pig offers the antithesis of that. It features a man who deeply, deeply cared about the one thing he’s got left going for him and he’s not going to resort to violence in order to get it. It’s even better than that. Without spoiling anything, I’ll just tell you that Rob decides to become his old self again in order to get his pig back and his old self marked people’s lives, in entirely non-violent ways. His old self was absolutely beloved.
Pig is a movie about love and what’s left of it in the midst of loss and heartbreak. There is very little violence in it and it doesn’t matter one bit.
To be or not to be Nicolas Cage
So, why Nicolas Cage, right? Why use a tired, battered parody of himself to embody such an earnest character? Although he’s terrific in Pig, you can’t ever quite forget that you’re watching Nicolas Cage on screen. I believe it was a great choice for extremely meta reasons. Just like Rob, Nicolas Cage has a baggage for being exactly the opposite of who he is in the moment. Pig is a movie that systematically breaks assumptions and Cage comes with a shitload of these.
Pig introduces itself like a revenge movie, but it’s protagonist is non-violent. Rob introduces himself like a man who gave up on life, but it turns out he’s got buried passionate nature. Nicolas Cage is known to be this over-the-top party guy with crippling IRS debt who will show up for any pay check and people forget he’s won the Oscar for Best Actor. It couldn’t have been anyone but him. He never disappears into his role, but he embodies what Pig stands for.
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I really, really liked Pig. It is so antithetical to anything you might expect out of a movie like this. By refusing any artifice that kidnapping movies like these usually resort to, co-writer and director Michael Sarnoski shines a light on people and emotions rather than action, which is great. Action reveal character, so it’s always more entertaining when a protagonist doesn’t act like anybody else. I was thoroughly moved. I was thoroughly charmed.
