100 Movies Every Catholic Should See #133: Pig (2021)

Directed by Michael Sarnoski. Starring Nicolas Cage, Alex Wolff, Adam Arkin.

Catholics know that food can be sacramental. Not only in a Eucharistic sense, but small-s sacramental: physical vehicles of grace that enter our daily lives and point us towards heaven. We use special food to celebrate feast days; we give up food as a gesture of penance for sin; we pray over our meals to offer them back to the One who provided them for us; we gather our families together to share meals, strengthening our bonds with each other and creating lasting memories. A good meal can be the opportunity for revelation and reconciliation, as in Babette’s Feast, or for showing reverence and dedication to one’s simple craft, as in Jiro Dreams of Sushi or Ratatouille, or simply for radiating and receiving love from those with whom you share the table. Food can also be a vehicle for memory: the pie that your great aunt used to make, the staple meals your mom and dad put on the table day after day in your childhood, the holiday traditions shared with your family, the meals cooked with your spouse or the great dates you shared together. Food is far more than fuel for us biological meat-machines; it truly can be a sacramental instrument of love and grace.

Pig is an unassuming little film which illuminates the ways in which food can be vehicles of grace. It was atrociously marketed; when I first saw the film in theaters in 2021, I was expecting John Wick with a pig instead of a dog. When I instead got a slow burn drama, I would have left early if it weren’t for my overwhelming love for Nicolas Cage (the only other person in my theater fell asleep and was snoring. Loudly.). A few years on now, I can appreciate the film for what it is: a contemplative meditation on grief, family, and healing and the way that food can facilitate revelation, forgiveness, and the processing of emotions that seem at times too great for the human spirit to comprehend.

(spoilers ahead)

The film follows Robin Feld (Nicolas Cage), a famous chef-turned-recluse in the Oregon mountains following the death of his wife, Lori. His only companion is his truffle-hunting pig, whom he shows great love and affection and shares everything with. When the pig is kidnapped, Robin goes on a journey back to his former life in Portland in an attempt to get back the only creature he loves. His companion on this journey is the buyer for his truffles, Amir (Alex Wolff), a young restaurant supplier trying to make a name for himself in Portland’s cutthroat fine dining world while competing with his stern and successful father (Adam Arkin). Together, this unlikely pair make their way through kitchens, back alleys, and meat-packing facilities on a search for the person who took Robin’s beloved pig. It’s a journey deep into Robin’s past as he encounters former employees, friends, and even journeys back to the house he shared with Lori, now owned by a new family with children. Robin must confront his past and his grief on this search, as well as rediscovering the way that food can heal relationships and rebuild broken communities.

A few moments in the film stand out as particularly grace-full. Robin’s journey begins with him alone, in the woods, cooking with only the simplest ingredients and what he can forage from his surroundings. He uses that to create what looks like a delightful meal (if you like mushrooms), but he eats it alone, sharing this good food with his pig. The talents of this great chef are literally cast before swine, showing his utter disconnect from human community. By the end of the film, however, he is teaching Amir how to cook and sharing a meal with Amir and his father, pouring his love into his craft and reattaining joy in preparing and eating food with others. Robin was miserable when he was alone, but at peace when in community; cooking and eating this meal together was the vehicle for healing Robin’s misanthropy and heartache.

Another moment is when Robin calls out another chef’s cooking as a lie. Food can be an authentic and generous gift of one’s self, or it can be false, a mere chasing of trends and job rather than a calling. As he eats at a Michelin-starred restaurant, he asks to see the chef and remembers him as an old employee at his restaurant. The chef is very successful, overseeing one of the trendiest restaurants in Portland, but you can see in his face the stress, the fake smile, the lie of it all and Robin calls him out for it. Robin remembers that this man wanted nothing more than to run an old-fashioned English pub, not a fancy, trendy haute cuisine restaurant. The other chef slowly breaks under Robin’s interrogation, realizing how much of his life was a lie and how he had perverted his calling and made it into a mere job by not authentically pursuing his craft with love. I like to think that that man got his pub, responding to the grace of this revelation and returning to a more authentic craft.

Finally, the climax of the film. It is slowly revealed that it is Amir’s father who had Robin’s pig kidnapped, as a way of choking his son out of the restaurant business in which the father thinks he will not succeed anyway. Through the film we’ve seen the difficult relationship Amir has had with his father and the heartache he feels at the loss of his terminally ill mother. He remembers one particular date that his parents came back from, a meal which set them both at ease and gave them a joy and peace he rarely remembered in his troubled childhood. That meal had been cooked by Robin Feld. In a (perhaps implausible) moment of grace, Robin remembers the very meal and recreates it, bringing father and son back together and reviving deeply repressed memories that the man, in his grief and regret, was unprepared to deal with. We are left uncertain as to how this will change the father, but Amir grows in his sympathy with his father and his determination to show him filial love regardless of his actions. All three of our main characters are forced to deal with their grief rather than repress it, but because of the meal this is brought about by love rather than trauma, by sharing in a sacramental moment which brings revelation. There is deep sorrow here, yes, but also a clearer reckoning with the truth and a determination to move on, to process the grief rather than repress it.

Robin returns to his cabin in the woods, without his pig but with a new friend in Amir and a clearer perspective of himself, his wife, and his grief. He is finally able to listen to a cassette tape his wife had made for his birthday, remembering her rather than repressing her. Through this journey of loss, Robin had remembered how to love. By renewing his craft in fellowship with others, he had experienced grace and found a peace unobtainable in the solitude of the wilderness. By journeying into the past, haunted by the ghost of his wife, he was finally able to let her be at peace and once again find joy in her memory.