When the film moves to the city, the urban landscapes are as oppressive as the forest was comforting.Ĭage seems at home smell-testing mushrooms and searing them in a pan, enduring a savage beating, and philosophizing with various supporting characters, and bonding with Amir, the film's second lead. The script and direction regard nature with the eyes of people who are comfortable in it. He doesn't talk much at first, but grows more verbose as the story unfolds, probably as a result of Rob reentering society and being forced to use communication skills he'd been keeping in storage. He's full of mystery and tenderness, with hints of repressed despair and rage. Rob is a great character, a philosopher-monk identified by Amir as a practicing Buddhist, but also a Christ figure, a clown, and a regular guy who, catastrophic losses notwithstanding, is too full of himself to connect and heal. It's easy to see why Cage wanted to be in this movie. He reminds him of the fantasy restaurant he once described to Rob, and asks him whether he ever tried to make it happen. Rob's photographic memory comes in handy while trying to find Pig in one scene, he identifies a maitre'd ( David Knell) as somebody he worked with for exactly two months many long years ago. Rob was once a legendary part of it, until he dropped out for reasons that are not entirely cleared up by the movie's end. This secret society appears to have a code, a history, and secrets. The big one is the underground network of chefs, sous-chefs, restaurant owners, and food and equipment suppliers operating in and around Portland. Is it a realistic universe like " Leave No Trace" or something stylized, like in the Wick films? More the former than the latter, although there are somewhat unreal or expressionistic elements. We don't know anything about Rob when the movie begins, nor do we know what kind of world "Pig" is set in. He's not being abusive, just telling the truth as he sees it. But even though Cage's shaggy man-mountain look evokes his star turn in 1997's " Con Air," this is not a revenge picture, or even much of an "action movie" per se-unless you count scenes where Rob, a soft-spoken but keenly observant man, verbally batters other people by saying things that strike them in a deep place. It's unglamorous and brutal, and thus not easy to watch. There's a little bit of violence in this film. He wants to go to the nearest big city, Portland, because he's pretty sure that's where she is and he has a vague idea of who might've taken her.īut if you're expecting a rampage, you'd better find another movie. We don't know how he lost her, only that he has audio recordings of her that he can't bring himself to play.Īnd then Pig is kidnapped in the middle of the night, pulled out of the house squealing. We're given to understand that Amir is Rob's main source of income, but that he doesn't need much because he's committed to living off the grid, communing with nature and nursing a motherlode of grief over a woman. A younger man named Amir ( Alex Wolff) shows up to buy a haul of truffles. We see them hunting for truffles together, and we watch Rob doting on Pig and cooking up mushrooms in a pan. Pig appears to have a knack for finding exquisite fungi. The film begins with the hero, Cage's quiet and introverted woodsman Rob, in a cabin with his pig, who is referred to only as Pig. No matter how circumspect I try to be in this review, I'm certain to tell you something you'd rather have stumbled into on your journey. For these reasons and more, "Pig" is on a short list of movies I loved that I wish I hadn't been assigned to write about, because I so enjoyed not having any idea what I was in for. I watched it with a friend who checked out halfway through because it wasn't the movie she was hoping it would be-basically “ John Wick,” but with a pig, wherein a long-haired forest hermit named Rob ( Nicolas Cage) gets bloody revenge against the criminals who kidnapped his truffle-hunting best friend. There are aspects of it that cannot be said to "work" in any conventional filmmaking sense, but it's hard to imagine that the writer/director, Michael Sarnoski, and its star and co-producer, Nicolas Cage, lost a minute of sleep over anything like that, and its commitment to its own oddball vision is what makes it linger in the mind. From start to finish, it never moves as you might expect it to. What a beguiling, confounding film "Pig" is.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |