Pig (2021)
Michael Sarnoski’s Pig is an unusual and unexpectedly affecting film that appeals to your emotions as much as to your senses. In some ways (bear with the douchery) it felt like a Byron-esque challenge between friends. “Who can take a movie about a pig and make it an emotional drama? Who can turn the man’s best friend formula on its head?” There’s a real tenderness that Cage and Wolff exhibit as they explore the ways in which grief can isolate us from both ourselves and each other. While Cage’s Robin—a renowned chef turned recluse—renounces any attachment to the world that once praised him, Wolff’s Amir numbs his own pain by pining for paternal approval and social status. You enter into the film expecting a revenge thriller—“Taken but with a pig,” as a viewer behind me put it—but wind up on a melancholic, gentle journey about loss, what we choose to care about, and how those choices define our lives.
This shared thread of loss is grappled with throughout the movie in gutting, tactile moments—the screams of Robin’s pig as its taken from their home, the silent cries and contortion as he later discovers its tragic death. And while the film’s moments of levity are scarce, the exploration of Portland’s restaurant scene deftly balances an affectionate, consuming love of food and a high-stakes obsession with notoriety that’s in stark contrast to the glamorized perspective we’re accustomed to watching on the travel channel. When food is prepared onscreen, it’s done so with quiet deference. This is what sets Robin apart from the unhinged, clamoring, and sadistic characters who’ve continued competing with one another after he’s abdicated his position in their world. Alarmingly, we find that their competition extends even beyond what critics see as we follow Robin inside an underground fighting ring for Portland’s restaurant workers and culinary masters.
Even with these cutthroat practices in mind, it’s tempting to question why a chef at the top of the food chain would leave his reputation behind to become a truffle hunter. “We don’t get a lot of things to really care about,” Robin tells Amir, and it’s this care—for his late wife and his animal companion —that pushes him to leave and, momentarily, reenter the restaurant world. Cage’s increasingly blood-covered face and stoic delivery of each line hint at a simmering, inevitable act of violence. We expect that Robin’s drive to rescue his pig will result in a rampage. Instead, he appeals to the sensory memories of Amir’s father—a perfect foil, the former consumed by the industry that the latter eschewed. Rather than pursue revenge, Robin teaches Amir how to make the meal which once brought his parents so much joy and, in doing so, helps both father and son confront their grief.
Much will be said about Cage’s performance, but Wolff shines bright in the aftermath of Hereditary as an actor who can embody the full scope of familial pain while making the audience feel the terrifying smallness of being someone’s child, regardless of age. Amir quite literally sticks along for the story’s ride and, in learning about Robin and witnessing both his grief and determination, allows his own hurt to surface. In Wolff’s final moment on screen, you see him turn off the radio and lie down in his car, vulnerable and overcome with the grief he’d so clearly tried to avoid, before cutting to Robin, who finally hits play on a recording left behind by his wife. This final contrast of silence and sound—the voices we use to drown out pain and the ones we avoid for fear of unearthing it—brings the film to a thoughtful close and lingers as the credits roll.
