#040 - Pig (2021)
Hello and welcome to my web log. Tonight I watched Pig (2021).
If you ever wondered what it would be like if Diogenes lived in Portland, well then good news: there is this movie just for you and it is called Pig. Nic Cage’s Rob is an exile from the city, living in the wilderness. The exact reason for his exile is never made clear and the film tries to renegotiate the terms of his exile a decade and a half after the fact. Depending on the degree to which we think his exile was self-imposed, it was either a result of his tremendous grief at the death of his wife or it was because he was a total fucking asshole and everyone hated him. Like Diogenes, he wanders the city looking for something deserving of his respect and love, and like Diogenes, the searching becomes more about his frustration and disgust for the need for the search than it ever really was about the finding. He is unconcerned with money or hygiene. He upbraids a former pupil for chasing money and the hollow praise of critics and patrons. He tutors a powerful man’s son. In a climactic moment, he shakes an even-keeled rival by presenting him with a plucked chicken (a featherless biped). I am tempted to watch the movie again just to see if Rob ever spits in anyone’s face. Rob doesn’t live in a big jug and to me this is the main difference between him and Diogenese.
When this movie came out, it was advertised as the next John Wick which I think does it a disservice. While both films are about sad men in early retirement seeking some kind of justice or retribution following the loss of a pet, Pig isn’t really an action movie. Sure, there’s the one fight scene but it feels like it was included in the movie so it could be used in the trailer so the movie could be advertised as an action movie. The fight scene is the spire on the top of the Empire State Building: hastily tacked on to support dubious advertising claims. But maybe the movie had more of an impact on me the first time I saw it because I was expecting an action movie. Sure, I got a little misty-eyed at the beginning of John Wick but I did not expect to cry so many times the first time I saw Pig. Reading back over what I just wrote, I worry that this all doesn’t seem like an endorsement. But it’s a pretty good movie! You can even quote me on that when they add this to the Criterion Collection and they need beloved critics of the cinema to name-drop on the back cover in 8-point font.