An intensely quiet and soulful performance from Nicolas Cage: Pig reviewed

What use does a fallen and corrupted world have for a man of integrity? This was not the question I had anticipated walking away with after viewing the new Nicolas Cage indie Pig, but much of the film, from Cage’s intensely quiet and soulful performance to the new ideas it has to offer a very old narrative, was a satisfying surprise.

The film is ultimately a story of revenge, but it plays out in unexpected ways. Cage is Robin Feld, a man living off the grid with only a truffle pig and a recording of his deceased wife for companions and a trade in the luxury food item as an income. But when his cabin is invaded and he is attacked and his pig is abducted, he’s forced to con-front his old life as a chef in Portland to get her back.

Truffles are wild things of great value, in huge demand from luxury diners, but they resist cultivation and therefore control. This becomes the presiding idea of Pig: there are good things in the world but they have been ruined by exploitation, their original meaning replaced by dollar signs. The restaurant industry, then, is a perfect setting for a story of this kind, as the act of feeding another person, which is meant to bring life and comfort and pleasure, has been contaminated by greed and overrun by charlatans.

It is slowly revealed through the story that Feld was once a chef of great renown, but his style of cooking — simple and perfectly executed rather than flashy — is now deemed old-fashioned and what’s hot is deconstructed gimmickry, with a fetish for the hyper-local and the ‘artisan’.