#existensial

When an active volcano is utterly more beautiful than Seattle

Pig, directed by Michael Sarnoski, his first movie debut, along with a stunning performance by Nicolas Cage -undoubtedly one of the best performances in his career- is a remarkably powerful, deep, and multi-layered picture, that maintains the personal, embraces the simple and touches intimately. It’s a story of a brilliant man whose grasp of the world had failed throughout a progressive realization that his attachment to the proud things of his life was nothing but an artificial sick joke, and all had led him to a life of escape and solitude. His abode is nature, and his profession is truffle hunting, and his only companion, the only other soul that he bonded with and ate with and smiled with, was his truffle pig. The setting is simple and is not the most original, yet what elevates and styles and polishes it, is everything around it; The melancholy of the dimmed lighting throughout the picture, the modest dialogue, the rawness of nature, the dry unwashed blood on Cage’s bruised face, his dirty ragged hair, and all this honesty’s and innocence's contrast with the heinous, senseless, soulless, noise of the city; Its evil, and all the “civil” things that march with it. This is a sad story of a man with a dying hope in a dying world, in a desperate pursuit of a brittle reality that he created at the corners of what is left alive; And this story with all its pieces, is relatable, empathetic, universal, and is unapologetically utterly nihilistic.

The setting has a man in escape from civility. His profession as a truffle hunter is an emotional metaphor of the chase of the hidden gems in nature, rather than money or materials or the modern-day consumerism that ridiculed all values. His companion is sweet and smart and innocent, and despite the expected distance from the idea, this friendship with all its depths and tenderness, is very relatable and close to the universal human needs that we all share. His companion gets kidnapped by pitiful men to be sent to the big people of the truffle industry in the city. The movie is the journey to find the Pig, and the journey takes us to a beautiful and profound analysis of Cage’s character and several others around him. The depth of his character is magnified by a secondary character of a naive teenager that is consumed by his modern car and its stereo with its constant nagging songs and the pretentious commentary in between. The journey takes us to Cage’s past as a renowned legendary chef who trained many and left everything behind. And this journey embarks with the big man, the corporate man, the money king, the bureaucrat selfish monotonous villain who took the pig. The journey is relatable, not solely with me, but with all its characters, and the evil man was too in the hunt, as was Cage, for something that can truly feel real. 

The story is an illumination of the hopeless present and its absolute grim future, hence, finds solace only in the past, the nostalgic, and the defining old moments of our lives. For Cage, the warmth of his past was in a beautiful recorded voice of a partner; Amongst relationships of colleagues and students in the past; In the taste of a mushroom tart, a bottle of wine, and his old friend’s salted baguette. For the villain, as he is as human as Cage, yet lost and angry, his Rosebud was an old magical meal in a magical restaurant of a magical night with his deceased wife. Most of the character traits, their struggles, and their choices, were stemming from an ultimate escape from the now, and a desperate need to recreate the past, reflecting a general sense that we too have little to be truly interested in and are more and more feeling the scarcity of what can be felt as real.