BEFORE: OK, final day of the Nicolas Cage-a-thon - that means with 10 appearances, Mr. Cage is the current leader for 2022. So far, of course, because shortly after Father's Day I'll be hosting my annual Rock & Doc Festival, aka the Summer Music (and Documentary) Concert Series. Just about anything is fair game during that month-long extravaganza, like last year's festival kind of got split into two halves, one in April that was very political, and one in August that was more focused on pop stars - but also Jimmy Carter and MLK. So there may have been some overlap, and Ronald Reagan ended up with the most appearances for 2021, because he bridged both worlds, and you can't make a doc about 80's music without archive footage of a President or two, it seems. With this year's planned foci on music stars (Rick James, Neil Young, Kenny G, Alanis Morrissette, Velvet Underground), comedians (Dick Gregory, Betty White, Elaine Stritch, Don Rickles, Mel Brooks, Bob Einstein), and various others (Rita Moreno, Jacques Cousteau, Bob Ross, Pete Buttigieg, and the "Sesame St." writers), really, it's anybody's game still. Everyone from Dean Martin to Carl Reiner to Merv Griffin has a shot at the title, and I'd like to be surprised, so I don't want to add things up before they happen. But we're gonna get there...
I learned about this film from the Academy of Motion Pictures' streaming site, which I had to sign on to on behalf of my boss, who's admittedly very backwards where tech is concerned. While there, cuing up a film for him, naturally I took a peek at what else was available - I made a list, of course, and I'm gradually working those films into my programming, but it's going to take a while. Still, I can confirm that somebody somewhere DID take the time to make sure that this Nicolas Cage feature was Oscar-eligible. Was it nominated? Did it win anything? Well, no, but just being ELIGIBLE to be nominated is a tough task, it's like a prize unto itself, or at least that's something that filmmakers tell themselves.
THE PLOT: A truffle hunter who lives alone in the Oregon wilderness must return to his past in Portland in search of his beloved foraging pig after she is kidnapped.
AFTER: I've now watched enough Nicolas Cage-centric movies to spot some of the common themes - he's typecast as the loners, the outcasts, the mixed-up people who can't seem to do life right, but are still called upon to save the day, or are willing to take up arms and oppose injustice, if it gets his character back to a point where people will just leave him the hell alone. So this character is RIGHT in his wheelhouse - he's a man basically living off the grid, with his pet pig, and his connection to the outside world is the young truffle dealer who visits once a week to supply the Portland-area restaurants, and brings him food and supplies.
Of course, there's a reason - he's still mourning his lost love, who died ten years ago. Hey, maybe it takes people that long to recover, everybody's different - and we're all going to be in that boat someday, perhaps, when our life has fallen apart, or perhaps we blew it all up for a reason, or we got so burned out in a tough career that going off to live in a forest, at least for a time, sounds like a darn good idea. I knew there were people in certain parts of the world that use pigs to find the elusive truffles, but I thought this was a European thing, I didn't know it was happening in Oregon. Is it? I think there's a documentary about truffle-hunting pigs out there somewhere, but I'll bet it's impossible to link to, probably no archive footage of David Bowie or Carl Reiner in it. Ah, well.
We don't really see WHO steals the pig, there's some kind of explosion and "tweakers" are blamed for the crime, but Rob, our hero, is determined to get the pig back. This means hitching a ride with his connection into Portland, where we learn that Rob used to be a renowned chef, and the question then becomes whether people still remember him, and if there's enough good will or bad reputation left from his time living with the hu-mans for him to get the right help from the right people. His first stop is some kind of underground fight club, because from what we know about Portland from Chuck Palahniuk is that if Fight Club is real, it's probably in Portland. And all it takes for Rob to earn some money is to put his name up on the big board, and sure enough, someone's willing to pay to beat him up real bad. Not exactly sure how this helps him track down the pig, though.
Rob also stops in at the house where he used to live with his wife, and then Amir gets them a lunch reservation at a hip downtown restaurant, and of course the head cook there used to work for Rob, and of course Rob knows exactly what to say to him to deflate his balloon and get him to reveal his current truffle source. Head chefs must be plagued with self-doubt, apparently all you have to do is remind them that they've settled for being trendy, and they forgot all about that great restaurant English pub concept that's been in the back of their brain for a decade, so come on, man, what are you even DOING? You totally sold out! Look, my wife and I watch a TON of food competition shows, but "Top Chef" is the stand-out, and this is exactly what happens, when Tom Colicchio can make a young chef second guess themselves with just one simple question, like "Did you intend to blanch the asparagus for so long?" or "What's the plan, are you going to braise the meat or just roast it?"
The restaurant Rob visits is called the Eurydice, and that name alone adds a whole new dimension to the meaning of the film. In Greek mythology, Eurydice was the dead lover of Orpheus, who descended into Hades' realm to escort her back to the land of the living, only he received instructions that he should walk out of hell without looking back, lest she disappear forever. Rob here has to return to the city (Portland = hell) to try and recover his Pig (he really loves that pig) but this means looking backwards (into his past) which is very dangerous indeed. He's risking it all just to get back the life he knew, and this extends to the pig and the fact that he's still mourning his dead wife, when he really should be moving forward and moving on, even though that means the life he enjoyed is gone forever. Is it better to acknowledge this or to continue to live in a state of uncertainty? It's the conundrum of Schrödinger's Pig, in a way.
It's maybe a bit of a conceit in the script here that Rob would remember every single meal he ever prepared, every single diner who ever passed through his restaurant - that could be thousands of people, a million meals. But then there are some people who manage to remember every day of their lives, every person they've ever met - it's a condition called hyperthymesia, or HSAM (highly superior autobiographical memory) and it does exist. Clearly I don't have it, because I had to look up the name of the condition - but I can't even call a NITPICK POINT on this, because it's possible. I take photos of the great meals I've had, especially the beer dinners that used to take place in Manhattan, I hope that they eventually come back into style.
The point is that once Rob learns who took the pig, his last attempt to get the animal back is to cook that person a spectacular meal, one that would evoke so much emotion that it would bring about the internal desire for redemption, elicit a confession and basically re-wire the entire situation to flip it in Rob's favor, and that's maybe a lot to ask of one meal. Most of the time, we're all just eating to sustain ourselves for the day. How many truly transformative meals are any of us going to have over the course of our lives? I can maybe think of a few, like our visits to the Texas State Fair, or the arrangement of the Le Village buffet at the Paris Casino in Las Vegas (it's divided into the cuisines of five regions of France: Normandy, Burgundy, Provence, Alsace and Brittany). Pretty much, our whole Buffet Crawl through Vegas was transformative, but the French buffet really stood out.
Here's our next potential life-changing food experience - we love the Breakfast Buffet at the Borgata Casino in Atlantic City, to the point where no trip to A.C. would be complete without a stop there. My wife and I decided that the COVID pandemic, at least from our P.O.V., would not be considered "over" until we find ourselves at the Borgata buffet on a Monday morning (instead of the typical Fri-Sun jaunt there, we do Sun-Tues) enjoying the unlimited breakfast fare. We just tried to book a trip there in late April, but now that's been moved to mid-May. Par for the course, I suppose but the point is that our pandemic experience WILL end, and that's going to be the symbolic meal that proves it. We're gonna get there, too...
But first, Easter is the next milestone. Easter Sunday is just 15 days and 15 films away. Will there be ham on your holiday menu?
Also starring Alex Wolff (last seen in "My Friend Dahmer"), Adam Arkin (last seen in "A Serious Man"), Nina Belforte, Gretchen Corbett, David Knell (last seen in "The Devil and Max Devlin"), Beth Harper, Julia Bray, Darius Pierce, Elijah Ungvary (last seen in "What Happened to Monday"), Cassandra Violet, Sean Tarjyoto (last seen in "Going the Distance"), Kevin Michael Moore (last seen in "Wild"), Tom Walton, Davis King, Dana Millican, Dalene Young, October Moore
RATING: 6 out of 10 deconstructed menu items
No comments:
Post a Comment