While attending Yale University, aspiring filmmaker Michael Sarnoski wrote a screenplay with fellow Yale student Vanessa Block. At the time, Sarnoski wanted to explore themes of grief and loss after losing his father at a young age. He centered the script around this image of an older man and a pig living in the woods all alone. Sarnoski presented the script to WME, who suggested Nicolas Cage for the lead role after giving it a readthrough. Cage loved the writing and agreed to star, and through that, they cast Alex Wolff to star opposite him. With the cast in place, they began shooting in Portland, Oregon, in September of 2019 for roughly 20 days. Neon, the distributor for Ingrid Goes West, I, Tonya, and Parasite, picked up the film for distribution in March 2020. Finally, on July 16, 2021, Michael Sarnoski’s Pig hit the big screen in the US.
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Synopsis
Rob Feld (Nicolas Cage) is a hermit living in the woods outside of Portland with his pig and hunting truffles. He sells the truffles to Amir (Alex Wolff), who supplies ingredients to high-end restaurants and is Feld’s only outside contact. One night, a group of people break into Feld’s cabin, knock him out, and kidnap his pig. Feld asks Amir for help, and he points him to drug addicts Bree (Julia Bray) and Scratch (Elijah Ungvary). Unfortunately, the couple sold the pig, so Rob and Amir head to downtown Portland to find where the pig is. After chasing down various leads, it turns out that Amir’s father, Darius (Adam Arkin), was responsible for kidnapping the pig. Darius offers to pay Rob $25,000 to leave the pig, but he refuses and ends his partnership with Amir. Rob must do whatever it takes to get his pig back with nothing to lose.
Review
From how I described the movie, this sounds like it could be a John Wick-style action movie with Nic Cage. However, Pig is nothing like that, which will be good or bad depending on your expectations. Instead, this is an intense, character-driven drama that deals with loss, death, isolation, friendship, and finding hope. Even at roughly 90 minutes, this is a slow burn where not much happens, and it’s more dialogue-driven. It helps that the film has a beautiful cast delivering this well-written dialogue to help keep your attention. Nicolas Cage is in top form as a lowly hermit trying to live out his days with his beloved pig. Alex Wolff works perfectly off Cage as the young and inexperienced Amir dealing with family issues. Though he’s not in the film much, Adam Arkin stands out as Darius, both intense and grieving.
While the rest of the cast does a good job, Nicolas Cage is easily the most substantial presence here. Admittedly, this comes at the price of the rest of the cast not given much material to work with. On the one hand, it’s better to have one fully-developed character than several characters you have to keep track of. However, it’s hard to care about the other characters when only one gets any backstory or character development. That said, the direction is wonderfully moody, and there’s a foreboding sense of dread throughout. Even when there’s no dialogue, you can feel the sadness and remorse on the actors just by looking at them. Most would probably dismiss this as a pretentious vehicle for Nicolas Cage, but they’d be missing out on something special. Overall, Pig is a wonderfully melancholy character study with an incredible lead that sticks with you after watching it.
Buy Pig from Amazon: https://amzn.to/3cXukY1.
