Pig is revelation.
Revealing is when what’s here is hidden then seen.
It’s really many individual ones, though widely considered they’re the same, and all the individuals are related, perhaps only proximately at first, but also in ways they themselves don’t initially see.
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Key is it’s here.
Problem is we don’t see it.
Action is required, ours or someone else, usually both, and sometimes it seems like everyone else is piling on, and then God gets into the act as well — no wonder, Theresa of Avila maybe said, he has no friends.
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Attentive patience. [See] [Weil]
Humiliation, sanctification, salvation. [Suffer] [de Caussade]
One stands perplexed at the sight of people’s sins and wonders whether to use force or humble love. Always choose humble love. Resolve on that once for all and you subdue the world. [Serve] [Dostoevski]
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Big Reveal in Pig.
Humanity but show don’t tell.
Say it like that and it becomes a thing, and it’s so far away, and Phew! we are safe again and still. Cage’s character says ‘serve’ and he means serve and of course it also means Serve but first it is said as ‘serve’.
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Cage plays Robin Feld.
Bird of spring and feld/felt?
I’d be told I overthink stuff, but I like what Sam [Robert DeNiro] says to Spence [Sean Bean] in Ronin: ‘You think too hard,’ Spence says, and Sam is bemused as much as anything else: ‘No one ever told me that before.’
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Feld’s a master chef.
Is not was because he must.
He cooks for one, or for two, depending on what you can see about his pig, and he cooks penultimately for a third and for three, and the truth is he cooks for all, at least four, or at least for all who will come.
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He looks like shit.
Both Feld and Cage, really.
It’s impossible not to think such thoughts if one knows even limited stuff about the famous, as we do. I kept thinking he’d clean up, and kick ass as well [see below] but other things happen instead and all to the good.
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Lipstick on a pig.
We’re told not to do this.
But depends on the pig — Feld doesn’t wear it nor, for that matter, does the pig, which isn’t just a pig or even some pig but is first just a pig. Too much lipstick, any woman can say, is too much; and not enough is not.
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Acting, old boy.
We do it every day, really.
We want more, though, deep down and deeply. If I met Liam Neeson I’d ask about Natasha Richardson, but of course have neither right nor privilege, and the famous learn their lessons about being honest with us and aren’t.
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Feld seeks his pig.
You expect him to kill for it.
But other things happen and seeing I thought so, or at least wondered four times or so, there’s something revealed to me. And then there is the pig — is it search for Feld, and is the answer to that the answer to
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Truffles are underground.
Their lives are hidden, until revealed.
The ‘fruiting body of a subterranean ascomycete fungus’ meaning they shoot spores, often microscopic. Many are pathogenic — disease-causing — such as powdery mildew on grapes and Dutch elm disease; these are often parasites.
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Truffles are mushrooms.
Mushrooms grow in shit and shade.
One must know where and how to look, and why, and if we don’t, we come to. Meaning we come to love it: at some level and some point people must want, not just ideally but to be human, and it’s possible to do this badly.
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It’s every day.
What we do, even on the Lunchables assembly line.
We plunge our hands into the muck for a house or a spouse, for health care and college costs, or perhaps just a canary yellow Camaro we love too much as it’s a car and not a pig, and we can find we’ve gone wrong.
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They’ve gone wrong.
Truffle hunters for anything but love.
In Pig, at least four characters find they’ve gone wrong — the driver, the dad, the chef … and Feld. He’s gone less wrong, or rather as much or more, but has returned, and such, searchers that is, know it never ends.
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He sees a new, anew.
It’s a reveal but he didn’t know.
Speaking for the trees, Feld realizes something else about himself and his search and there is always something else, something more, even if for him it’s ‘see you Thursday’ and sunlight and taking off one’s shoes.
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Cage knew Sean Penn.
Both went to Ridgemont High.
In a coming display jag of my limited awareness, I recall reading they had a falling out because in Penn’s view, Cage ‘sold out’ in the films he took [even before the last decade-plus] and Penn was instead a true believer.
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I like Nicolas Cage.
Even before this last decade-plus.
This is when he’s become known for taking the kinds of roles Val Kilmer wd turn down. My limited awareness is Cage was cheated by a financial advisor and needs the money.
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But might be love.
Easy to say money; might be love.
Charity cd say he doesn’t do it ‘for the money’ — wasn’t doing it before, when he it was still called money — but bec he believes, agrees, it’s his honor at stake, and there are debts to pay, and miles yet to go.
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Like Kilmer, too.
Cage is 57, Penn 60, Kilmer 61.
Penn takes jobs for his reasons, says things he believes … ditto. Kilmer’s taken Cage-like gigs for, again limited awareness, reasons more to what he sees in art and acting, himself and Hollywood; not perfect, not bad.
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Quick side note.
At least four nods to Fight Club.
May’ve missed one but there’s Portland, a tweak on underground fights for restaurant workers, Raymond K Hessel as master chef — also Feld’s longest set of lines, and … redemption, an homage in reverse. Dark stories, truly told.
Images, composed:
Cal Blend Soils [Kyle Ellefson]
Beach Brella [Boston Public Library]
Kids Canvas [Draw a Book, Still Life, Shading]
Boston Church [Author]