Once a day, you can eat for two minutes, but only what the people above you have left for you on the platform, which is a concrete slab descending each level of a vertical prison, one floor at a time. What will you do to survive when there is not a speck of food left by the time the platform comes to you?
Directed by Galder Gatzu-Urrutia, “The Platform” is a small film that benefits from not letting the audience know what is going on in the beginning: The viewer is thrown in with no context. We find lead Goreng (Ivan Massagué) on his first day of a six-month stint in a prison, only ever referred to as “the hole.” The audience never knows more than Goreng does at any given time, slowly learning more about his surroundings and the people as his time goes on.
Throughout the film, Goreng meets a worker at the prison, a religious man with shaken faith and a woman looking for her child in the prison. The people Goreng meets during his time in the “hole” all have lasting effects on his psyche and guide him on his journey from fear and confusion to understanding and purpose. With a small cast of characters to support the film and a small cell as the general setting, much relies on the quality of the dialogue and acting. Everyone delivers a unique role and solid performance. Goreng’s elderly roommate Trimagasi (Zorion Eguileor) is especially powerful as the first person Goreng meets in the prison, a man that teaches him the ways of the prison. These two share the strongest rapport, Trimagasi acting as a moral foil to Goreng throughout, exemplifying what he can fight against or eventually succumb to.
The extent of the setting in this film, with few exceptions, are the concrete cells with one hole in the ground and another in the ceiling for the food platform to pass through. The visuals are quite minimalistic as a result. In the night, the cells are lit red (with no clear reason other than to make it look interesting) which helps to break up the sometimes monotonous look of the film. At times there are some shots that truly stand out in the grey gloom of the prison, these tend to be from the interesting visuals the platform itself can create, descending with extravagant and colorful meals into bleak prison cells.
“The Platform” is clear commentary on the workings of class and wealth in our world, as those high above have the privilege of a bounty of food. And at the bottom there is none, just the empty dishes of the meals the people above ate. The film explores human nature in regards to class and survival, there is enough food on the platform for every person to receive food, as far as we know, but everyone eats as much as they can, not regarding those below them. Despite knowing they may be on a lower level the next month, they only act in the interest of themselves and of the present. “The Platform” is very reminiscent of Bong Joon Ho’s 2013 film “Snowpiercer,” which presented similar ideas of class and wealth, but it visualized class lengthwise on a train from front to back.
The film is a bloody and gore-filled affair, not afraid to explore the dark depths of survival — whether it be eating the maggots off of a rotting body or a body slamming against your cell from 100 floors up. The inmates are prone to suicide and murder the farther down they are, hopeless in their own lives or killing another for a source of food. By the end of the film, not much is explained or explored in terms of the world or prison that the characters inhabit; the Marxist message of the film is the only thing that is fully realized. The mystery of the workings of the prison are captivating, but the commentary on humanity is the driving force of the film. It’s disturbing, and provokes conversation on class and humanity, but it also makes for an entertaining and bizarre thriller that will leave you wondering where it all is headed.
