Picture a room. It’s got featureless cement walls. Grey. Gloomy. Brutalist. There’s a rectangular hole in the floor. It’s right there in the middle. You can see all the way down. You can see all the way up. Both sides dwindling towards an impossible vanishing point. There are similar rooms above and below you. You have no idea how many.
It’s a prison.
You and your fellow inmates are there for different reasons. Some are self-imposed, while others are serving a sentence. You’re allowed to bring one personal possession with you before you start serving your time in “The Hole”.
On the wall, there are two lights. One red. One green. Once a day, when the light turns green, a floating platform containing a smorgasbord of food is sent down from the top, pausing for a few moments on each level so you and your fellow inmates can eat. The people at the top get first dibs. The people below get the scraps. The food isn’t replenished as it descends.
You’re not allowed to hoard food. You’re not allowed to speak to those below you because they’re below you. And those in the rooms above won’t speak to you for the very same reason.
Once a month, throughout the duration of your sentence, you will be moved to a different level. It could be higher. It could be lower. There are no reasons given as to why you end up where you do. There is no relief for good behaviour.
It’s a social experiment.
What seems, at first, like a rather straightforward metaphor – for class and society, for inequity and the selfish nature of humanity – The Platform is actually something far more layered. The movie cribs from the best. From Snowpiercer and Saw. From Samuel Beckett and Jean-Paul Sartre and H.P. Lovecraft. From the allegory of the long spoons. And while it may not be as focussed as Waiting for Godot or No Exit, Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s debut feature is nevertheless a savagely efficient parable. One that is deeply cynical and yet ultimately necessary for our times. Or any time for that matter.
The movie begins with a very simple question. Trimagasi, an apathetic old man, asks Goreng, our naive protagonist: “It’s the start of the month. So the question is: what are we going to eat?” It sets the scene for a fiendishly mordant exploration of the extent human beings would go to eat; to survive. With each act more vicious than the last. With each act slowly breaking our rational protagonist by increasing the irrationality in the world around him.
On a purely literal level, The Platform speaks to that hostile notion of hell being other people. To the fact that others – and their gaze – is alienating, isolating, and controlling. It is exemplified in the film through the various individuals that Goreng encounters throughout his time in “The Hole”.
The metaphor, however, leaves you in something of an existential crisis. More so now, in the face of indefinite isolation, The Platform forces you to confront some difficult truths.
- What will you do as the world around you becomes more and more desperate?
- When do you start valuing your life – and those you love – over that of your neighbour’s?
- Does human nature – especially in times of great distress – allow for utilitarianism?
- Do you require the threat of punishment in order to behave in an ethical manner?
- What would make you put the needs of others on par with your own?
- Do you believe that past suffering earns you the right to be selfish in the future?
- Do we need a messiah in order to spawn a sense of spontaneous solidarity?
- Does a messiah’s message only resonate with those who have nothing?
- At which point does your religion become insufficient? At which point does it begin to fail you?
They are difficult questions. There are no easy answers.
The Platform
Netflix
94 minutes
Director: Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia
Writers: David Desola and Pedro Rivero
Cast: Iván Massagué, Antonia San Juan, Zorion Eguileor, Emilio Buale Coka, and Alexandra Masangkay
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