Directed by: Michael Sarnoski
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Alex Wolff, Adam Arkin
If you have a strict rule about not watching movies with ugly titles, skip that rule now. Go and watch this movie with an ugly title.
But, before watching, make sure that you are ready to decode a great deal of symbolism and be careful to understand that not everything being served at the table is just the food and only the food.
Sublimation is the essence of the movie, as usual, it comes in just one single sentence. That’s when former chef Rob (Nicolas Cage), who has run away from the whole material world and reality, tells his former apprentice: “We don’t get a lot of things to care about in our lives”. And that’s the whole truth, we really don’t and so when we have something, then we should really need to take care of it. It could be the one and only chance to care of it in your lifetime.
The movie’s story can be absurd if you see it from a certain perspective but it can also seem very everyday, very ordinary, very pedestrian, if you turn things upside down.
Celebrity chef Rob has hit a wall in his life. He could not stand the urban Portland anymore after a downturn in his personal life. He is living as a recluse on the outskirts of the city. He’s main preoccupation is discovering and collecting rare mushrooms for local high-end restaurants. The titular pig is the animal “helping him” to track down hidden spots in the woods where mushrooms can be collected.
One night, strangers attack Rob’s shelter in the woods and take his animal. He’s heading back to the city to look for his pig. He gets in lots of trouble doing that but giving up is not an option for him. He keeps going. The tragic outcome is finding out that his beloved animal was taken from him by the father of one of his best mushroom clients and current sidekick on this journey (played by Alex Wolff). The eccentric father (Adam Arkin) could not see his son being involved with the restaurant business against his will and outside his business circles. The father is apparently a kind of local mogul in the food and restaurant business. That’s why he decides to harm his son’s main mushroom supplier by taking and later killing the animal which was Rob’s companion in the wild.
The movie is aiming straight at the target. Taking care of something in a lifetime does not happen to everybody. And if you are lucky enough to take this once in a lifetime chance, don’t miss it, fight for it to the end.
Wildman Rob was finding mushrooms using the woods themselves, the pig was never the one who was tracking the mushrooms but it was here, was always here in the role of silent follower. That means so much, that gave life to the dead end.
This movie is very well crafted from a directorial point. It is slow and full of atmosphere. The silence is used as narration without words. Everything is so quiet.
Nicolas Cage in the main role is performing something which he has not done for quite some time. This is the kind of acting so unfamiliar for him in the last several years.
Go and watch this movie, and don’t forget to read between the lines while you recognize the point of the story’s symbols.
