Film Review: “Pig” is a Nic Cage drama about PDX melancholia

Director Michael Sarnoski’s gutsy drama shows us a Portland we don’t see

Actors Nicolas Cage [left] and Alex Wolff [right] in “Pig” (Image courtesy of Neon)

Cities like Portland become their own characters to the people who live in them. In time, they love and leave you like the enigmatic faces that make up director Michael Sarnoski’s “Pig” or the lastest Nicolas Cage flick you have to see to believe. Here, the weirdest thing about America’s weirdest city is the sobering places Sarnoski takes it in his strange, moving masterpiece.

For decades, Portland has enjoyed its unique status as a “weird” city—maybe it’s because it has the most strip clubs per capita in the U.S. or the prevalence of man buns and mustaches. The 170-year-old city’s good-natured moniker of “Keep Portland Weird” has become something of a contradiction, implying its rebel spirit is also part of a larger status quo. That hipster mindset seems like a perfect match for thespians like Cage, whose performance here is anything but hammy source material for internet memes.

There is a type of malaise eating away at Cage’s Robin Feld when we first meet the haggard truffle hunter and his pig in the Oregon wilderness. When his pig is kidnapped, Robin hitchhikes to Portland with a client, Amir (Alex Wolff), to get his four-legged companion back. There’s no reason to spoil “Pig” anymore than that—its best moments are better seen than read.

Cage on the set of “Pig” (Image courtesy of Neon)

“Pig” is best watched with as few expectations going in as possible. The reason is all Cage, who shoulders the burden of bringing Feld and Sarnoski’s script to life with a candor and gravitas remiscent of 2013’s “Joe.” Wild man Nick Cage is fun. The Cage Rage we get here is raw, pleading and personable. That’s new for all but the most zealous Cage stans who will savor his performance here.

Unboxing “Pig” is part of its appeal. Feld, a man with a secret and lost dreams, is as much an enigma as the story’s setting. Both become more apparent to the viewer as “Pig” plays out and wonderfully so.

Portland is the perfect setting for “Pig” in the same way that New York and Los Angeles are for coming-of-age stories. The Rose City is a kaleidoscope for self-expression and in “Pig” it’s ground zero for a coming-to-terms story. It’s a city of disarming contrasts, a maze of gentrified neighborhoods and tourist traps, a magic mirror for what your dreams mean to you. That, and it really is hours away from a thriving truffle trade.

There’s something unmistakably Portlandia about the cast of “Pig” and it’s not just the casting of the sketch-comedy’s Gretchen Corbett. Each of its character actors embody some grievance about the city’s culinary scene, its traffic, or its disappearing green spaces. Feld is a climate-minded urbanist who would take a walk over a car ride. Amir, a disaffected millennial born with a silver spoon, conjures up images of Portland bro culture. Darius, acted to a T by Adam Arkin, is a Portland NIMBY with more bite than he should have on paper.

Nicolas Cage in “Pig” (Image courtesy of Neon)

That might sound all too pretentious and it would be in other directors’ hands. Black tie restaurants, McMansions, muscle cars — they’re props in the lifestyle theater Sarnoski wants to expose. It’s the palpable anguish and despair Cage brings to the table that makes it all feel so plausible. It’s also cinematographer Patrick Scola’s panoramas that so beautifully convey the distance between the characters of “Pig” and of Portland after hours.

Of all the films reopening American cinemas this summer, “Pig” feels like it’s the one written for our times. A pandemic took more than 2,800 Oregonians away from their friends and families in the last 15 months and more than four million people worldwide. Millions more will spend their lives grieving. Some spend their lives not knowing how. “Pig” is just another reminder it’s okay not to be okay.