I figured there were two ways the pitch “Nicholas Cage is attempting to retrieve his stolen pig” could go. One would be a Mandy like film that escalates in its insanity to its bonkers conclusion. The 2nd is a dumpster fire that probably ends up with Nic Cage doing something unforgivable to or for his truffle pig. So what Pig actually is a revelation thanks to first time director Michael Sarnoski, who mines about as much as he can out a movie where Nicholas Cage is best friends with a pig.
But this is no ordinary pig to Robin Feld (Cage). This pig is a truffle savant, finding the best truffles in the Portland Oregon forest, which Feld sells to Amir (Alex Wolff) a local food supplier to the restaurants, for the past decade. Then one horrible night, Feld is assaulted, and his pig is taken from him. Feld, irate, gets Amir to take him deep into Portland’s restaurant scene, to track down where his pig went, and who is responsible.
The sales pitch implies that you should be ready for a Nicholas Cage explosion. However, that’s not the Cage performance you get in Pig. You get the simmering, legit acting one. His Robin Feld is a broken man, shut off from society with only a truffle pig as a friend and Amir as an acquaintance at best. So when his pig is captured, all Feld can bear to do is speak in direct, to the point sentences. He has no desire to form connections with anyone anymore, just to get his “best friend” back. What Amir doesn’t realize is that Robin has deeper ties to the Portland food scene than he lets on, and finding his pig means digging up his past life, and reconnecting to the outside world. For Robin this choice is filled with trepidation but necessity, and Cage grounds this entire thing in emotional reality, to the point where you forget he’s on the search for an effing pig!
But the hero here is really Michael Sarnoski. For a first time director, he shows a remarkable control over the tone and storytelling. The first hour he eases everyone in, gives them little pieces of what the trailer promised: crazy scenes with Nic Cage front and center in them. But there’s a scene at a super posh diner in part 2 where the tenor of the movie completely pivots. Cage is excellent in that scene, but Sarnoski uses the silence and Cage’s performance to draw something deeper out of the story than just the search for a kidnapped pig. The movie somehow becomes a treatise on how to live a fulfilling life, the emptiness of the search for vanity and power, and the power of food and its bond with human emotions. Scene after scene Sarnoski builds something real out of this totally ludicrous trip, so much so that by the end I just kept shaking my head, wondering if what I saw was legit.
Like the tried and true formula, the journey is more important than the destination. Even if the journey is traversing Portland’s underground culinary scene for an adept truffle pig. Nicholas Cage proves once again his full commitment really helps sell almost anything he does. I like to think he moved into the Portland forest during quarantine, and taught himself how to find truffles with a real pig companion, eating the dirt to find the perfect spot.