Pig

is the title of a new movie featuring Nicolas Cage. This post contains serious spoilers, so if you haven't seen the movie and plan on doing so, you should stop here and go see the film.

First off, it's Nicolas Cage, and at this point of his career, he's choosing intriguing roles in smaller films and using what I'd describe as the Stanislavski technique on steroids to play the roles he's chosen. And it's as much the other roles he's played throughout the years that helps define the strength of his performance in this film. There's a fine line between subtle/nuanced and lacking, and Cage treads the line very carefully, whereas restraint is not an adjective that would be appropriate to describe many of Cage's past performances. In this case, less was so much more. The plot is ostensibly about a hermit truffle hunter seeking the return of his truffle pig, and the behavior and actions taken prompt a suspension of disbelief, but it begins to make sense about three quarters of the way into the film that the actions apparently motivated by the theft of his pig is transference of the grief over the loss of his wife, an event that prompted Cage to leave his position in the culinary firmament, abandon his restaurant, and move into the woods where we find him fifteen years later. 

As Cage begins to deal with his grief, Cage's character also responds to the grief he observes in the people around him and addresses their losses in ways only his character could do: recreating the only meal that gave the antagonist's (man who who paid to have the pig stolen) wife joy before she committed suicide; building up the reputation of the antagonist's son who's spent his entire life living in the shadow of his father, whose dominance of the culinary scene is most likely an expression of trying to find something that would restore the spirits of his otherwise chronically depressed wife whose only moment of joy came after having dinner at Cage's character's restaurant before Cage's wife dies.

Just about every character in the film is dealing with loss in some way - even the characters in a scene that's part fight club except that food industry workers pay to beat up other people in the industry that have done them wrong somehow. But it helps illustrate how people cope with loss in unique ways.

And there will be those who think it merely a quirky story about a weirdo looking for his stolen pig.  And so it is.