VOD REVIEWS: Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s feature film debut, THE PLATFORM is horror, sci-fi activism, and Orwellian dystopia done sublimely
There are times when films are positively riddled with symbolism, so much so, that whatever the hell the “message” is supposed to be gets garishly cluttered like the cinematic version of some cheesy Hawaiian shirt. Audiences bend over backwards decoding, hunting for Easter eggs and forming fan theories. Often, these endeavors are dead ends motivated more by the viewer’s desire to play detective and prove their perceptive credentials. In recent years, it’s all become something of a cottage industry on social media to the point that filmmakers can magically transform their narrative shortcomings into free PR, slyly giving post-mortem “explanations” of what was supposedly happening among the “throw-everything-against-the-wall” clutter. Which brings me to one of the things I absolutely love about Spanish director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s feature film debut, The Platform.
Currently available on Netflix, there is one symbol in this entire film: a prison building several dozen stories tall (or even more!) with a platform in its centerpiece carrying food down from one level to the next. It’s literally in almost every shot (barring a few quick scenes), and its meaning is hammered into us over and over again in unrelenting fashion. It’s a sort of economic force-feeding of visual expression which on paper seems redundant and boring. But the way it’s executed in this outstanding film is nothing short of sublime.
Part horror film, part sci-fi activism, part Orwellian dystopia, the setup here is simple. Aforementioned skyscraper is made up of bare concrete rooms with two occupants each. Shaped like square donuts, each room has a massive rectangular hole in the center which affords an acrophobic view of all the floors above and below. Down the multi-story empty shaft floats a platform filled with food. And not just any ordinary fare. We are talking about an exquisitely laid-out feast with everything from refined hors d’oeuvres to artisan confections fit for royal tables. The conveyance of this luxury cornucopia affords people on the first floor dibs on the meal, filling their bellies to their gluttonous delight. From there, the platform brings the leftovers down one level. And after the second floor goes through those, the scraps continue to the next and so on. As one can imagine, the lower it goes, the less food there is left to scrounge for. Even though it’s a very large spread, things get meager by the 20th floor or so. By the 50th floor down, scrambling for greasy crumbs and half-drank glasses of wine becomes a desperate ploy. And then it gets down to the 100th floor…and even further down. When it stops on your floor, you have a few short minutes to feast – the only meal of the day – before it moves on. There are more chilling elements to the cycle which won’t be spoiled here, but it all boils down to the most basic of biological fears: will you get to eat, or won’t you?
Just as it was in Vincenzo Natali’s The Cube, the challenge for the storyteller is to keep the same set piece interesting throughout the course of the narrative. The director’s filmic structure ensures this, keeping things going strong throughout. Performances are out in front here, bolstering what could have been a dull outing into a work you can’t turn away from. The protagonist is played with unrelenting force by veteran Spanish actor Iván Massagué. Carrying virtually every scene, his dynamic range organically flows from restrained caution to unbridled passion. As the tale evolves, built-in plot mechanisms change his circumstances regularly, making him not only face questions of survival, but also some pretty awful moral choices.
Comparisons to Gary Ross’ The Hunger Games seem to invite themselves for the obvious reasons but make no mistake, spectacular fight pieces will not be found in The Platform. Heroic escape plans and grandiose militant revolts don’t exist here. The confines of real-world limitations are imminently stark in this minimalist work. Which brings us to the second winning element of the film – the powerfully strong script. Explorations of human reactions to confinement and food insecurity span from altruistic to needlessly cruel. Avoiding uniform verdicts on the characters’ behaviors and choices under these stresses, the film chooses instead to contrast approaches to fear, problem solving and the value of having a conscience. All of it veers into the extremes of those ranges and all of it is vital and wholly believable. In short, Gaztelu-Urrutia has accomplished the rare feat of shunning cheap exploitation in favor of a diligent expedition into what fundamentally makes our species tick.
Of course, The Platform is primarily an allegory and a rather transparent one. The people at the top eat well, those below get tossed scraps, and beneath perhaps the top 20% of the food chain, it gets desperate. What could be more simple? No mystery here – this is a cinematic indictment of the institutional inequalities which needlessly subject the vast majority of humanity to avoidable misery. It’s the farce of “trickle-down theory” visualized and laid bare for the cruel lie that it has always been. Horrors abound in this scenario, distilling the global scale of everything from suffering and sadism to bravery and virtue into a refined dramatic expression.
This is not a film for those with a weak stomach and it is not recommended to be viewed too close to mealtime. Visceral imagery will have you gagging in a way you probably haven’t experienced before. Throwaway graphic violence makes no appearances here, but piggish brutality does and the way the camera captures it all will strike the part of your brain that induces vomiting. It’s obvious that the filmmakers’ message is simply this: we’re all living on The Platform already. Whether or not there’s a way out of it is also something which the narrative takes on. Its answer is chillingly ambiguous and hard to gauge with a malnourished mind. But this isn’t just food for thought – it’s a prompt for the audience to start thinking about where their own sustenance comes from, however sickening that may be.
