I Watch Movies: Pig

Pig

Nicolas Cage plays a truffle hunter; he and his pig live simply in the hills, his only contact the truffle buyer. Then some people come and steal his pig.

(Pigs naturally seek out truffles, the difficulty being to stop them eating them. Dogs can also be taught to find truffles but of course you need truffles to teach them the scent. They don’t eat them!)

He and his buyer follow their contacts, the trail leading into Portland. Cage turns out to have been a big deal in the restaurant business, a legendary chef until he vanished 15 years ago. He follows contacts, that lead them towards the buyer’s father, who supplies a lot of restaurants.

Cage moves through these worlds like a great shambling ape, dark brown dirty clothes, unkempt hair and beard, blood on his face from various injuries. Unable or unwilling to lie, he uses his blunt honesty and knowledge like a battering ram to get to where he wants. Variously normal places, such as kitchens, farms, diners, restaurants and streets have their strangenss revealed by his movement through them.

The film though is about grief and regret and loss and memory. It’s sad. Maybe it’s about facing the past too. That may not actually help. It might.

Watch This: For a film about grief and a search for a pig that treats the restaurant business as a strange underworld
Don’t Watch This: A pig is a filthy animal
For Another View: See Stuart Buck’s discussion of the film and the restaurant business