The Platform (film)

The Platform (film)
The Platform is a 2019 Spanish social science fiction horror film directed by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia. The film is set in a large, tower-style "Vertical Self-Management Center." Its residents, who are switched every month between its many floors, are fed via a platform which, initially filled with food at the top floor, gradually descends through the tower's levels, stopping for a fixed amount of time on each. The system inevitably leads to conflict, as the residents at the top levels get to eat as much as they can, with each level only getting the leftovers from the previous ones.
The film's cast includes Iván Massagué, Antonia San Juan, Zorion Eguileor, Emilio Buale Coka and Alexandra Masangkay. It premiered at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), where it won the People's Choice Award for Midnight Madness. At TIFF, the film also secured a worldwide streaming deal with Netflix. It was released on the streaming service on March 20, 2020.
Plot
Goreng wakes in a concrete cell. His cellmate Trimagasi explains that they are in "The Pit", a tower-style holding facility. Once per day, food arrived on "The platform" - a solid slab of unspecified material - that lowers from level 1, stopping for two minutes on each level. Prisoners can only eat when the platform stops on their level, and are subjected to fatal temperatures if they keep the food. The lower the level, the less food is left on the platform. Prisoners are randomly reassigned to a new level each month.
Trimagasi reveals that when assigned to level 132, he and his former cellmate cannibalized someone who had fallen down. One day, a woman named Miharu rides down the platform. Trimagasi explains she descends the pit once in a while to search for her child. Goreng volunteered to spend six months in the facility in exchange for a diploma, while Trimagasi is serving a year-long sentence for manslaughter.
Over the first month, they become friends, but on the day of the room shuffle, they are reassigned to level 171. Expecting there to be no food, Trimagasi ties up Goreng while the latter sleeps. Trimagasi explains his plans to use Goreng's flesh to sustain them both. On the eighth day, Trimagasi begins cutting into Goreng's flesh. Miharu arrives, attacks Trimagasi, and frees Goreng, who fatally stabs Trimagasi. Encouraged by Miharu, Goreng eats Trimagasi's flesh and subsequently becomes haunted by hallucinations of Trimagasi.
In the third month, Goreng awakes on level 33 with a woman named Imoguiri and her dog. Imoguiri, the Administration official who had interviewed Goreng before sending him to the Pit, claims to be unaware of the nature of the Pit and volunteered after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Imoguiri only eats her fill but fails to convince people on the lower level to do the same. One day, Miharu arrives injured, and Goreng and Imoguiri nurse her back to health. The following day, Imoguiri is distraught to find that Miharu has killed and eaten her dog. After Miharu leaves, Goreng mentions her child to Imoguiri, who says there are no children in the tower and Miharu came alone. She also reveals there are 200 levels in total. The following month, he awakes on level 202 to find that Imoguiri has hanged herself. Goreng eats her flesh to survive, plagued with hallucinations of his former cellmates.
In the fifth month, Goreng is assigned to level 6. His new cellmate, Baharat, attempts unsuccessfully to escape. Estimating that there are 250 levels, Goreng convinces Baharat to ride the platform down with him and ration the food. Fellow prisoner Sr. Brambang convinces them to send a symbolic message to the Administration by leaving a single panna cotta untouched. As they descend further, they hand out portions to the prisoners, attacking those who refuse to cooperate. They eventually encounter Miharu being attacked and try to save her, but she is killed and they are left severely injured. Goreng and Baharat continue to descend, eventually reaching level 333, where Goreng notices a child - Miharu's daughter - hiding under the bed. He gets off the platform with Baharat, only to have it continue downward, leaving them behind. Despite Baharat's reluctance, they feed the girl the panna cotta.
Goreng dreams of Baharat telling him "The girl is the message." He awakens to find that Baharat has bled to death. Goreng takes the child with him when the platform arrives. They descend to the bottom of the pit, where he once again hallucinates Trimagasi. Goreng attempts to get back on the platform, explaining to Trimagasi that he must bear the message. Trimagasi replies that "the message requires no bearer." Realizing Trimagasi is right, Goreng gets off the platform and the two walk away, watching as Miharu's daughter ascends.
Cast
Iván Massagué as Goreng, named after gorèng, which means "fried" in Indonesian/Malay.
Zorion Eguileor as Trimagasi, named after terima kasih, which stands for "thank you" in Indonesian/Malay.
Antonia San Juan as Imoguiri, named after Imogiri, a royal Javanese cemetery in Indonesia.
Emilio Buale as Baharat, named after baharat, which means "spice" in Arabic used in Middle Eastern, Turkish and Greek cuisines.
Alexandra Masangkay as Miharu, named after , which means "to guard, to watch over, to open one’s eyes wide" in Japanese.
Eric L. Goode as Sr. Brambang, named after brambang, a Javanese word for shallot.
as Baharat's friend
Txubio Fernández de Jáuregui as Chef
Production
The film was produced by Basque Films alongside Mr. Miyagi Films and Plataforma la película AIE, with the participation of RTVE and ETB and support from ICAA, the Basque administration and ICO. Shooting lasted for six weeks.
Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia says the film's key message is that "humanity will have to move towards the fair distribution of wealth", with an exploration of the importance of individual initiative in driving political change that critiques both capitalism and socialism. The film script is based on a theatre script by David Desola and Pedro Rivero, to which more action and physical elements were added to make it more suitable for a film. "Extensive" rewriting was required to convert the unproduced theater script into a film script. The director said it was a "torturous ordeal", as the writers defended their artistic vision and did not want some of the changes to be made.
The concrete prison cells were built for the production in a Red Cross facility in a port in Bilbao. The director asked for cells that looked "economical, robust, [and] impregnable", which emphasized a sense of architectural and engineering proportion. Only two tiers of concrete cells were built; the appearance of many tiers of cells extending above and below each cell (visible from the hole in the center of each cell) was added in post-production using visual effects. The director says the vertical tower of cells "represents the dehumanized coldness of the Vertical Self-Management Center".
The director states that the film's lavish "food was treated as another character in the story, one that is aesthetically antagonistic to the architecture of the prison." The luxurious displays of gourmet food were presented on "Versailles worthy tableware" to depict "excessive, almost erotic, opulent desire" that is eventually "desecrated" once the near-empty platform reaches the abject, starving inmates on the lower levels.
The director acknowledges the film can be difficult to watch, but he says the purpose of this approach is to generate discussion and debate by viewers about the political messages. When asked about the film's brutal violence and cannibalism, the director said the prison's "hole is a reflection of our society, [so] it couldn’t hide the violence. It had to show how we rip each other apart".
The film uses two actors who are cast against type; Iván Massagué and Antonia San Juan, who are known for their comedic roles, were chosen to lighten the film's weighty subject by adding "humour, irony, and surrealism". The film was shot chronologically, as the main actor Iván had to lose 12 kilos (26 lbs) over the six-week shoot to show his physical deterioration.
Release
The film was released in Spain on 8 November 2019 by Festival Films. The Platform was released onto Netflix internationally (including Spain) on 20 March 2020. In July 2020, Netflix revealed the film had in-fact been watched by 56 million households over its first four weeks of release, among the most-ever for one of their original films.
Reception
Critical response
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The site's critical consensus reads: "While it may feel muddled at times, The Platform is an inventive and captivating dystopian thriller." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 73 out of 100, based on 15 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Norman Wilner of Now correctly predicted that the film would win the People's Choice Award, giving it a five-N rating and writing that the film "has everything: low comedy, political allegory, left-field twists, crowd-pleasing surprises, spectacular violence, sadism, altruism, and yet more spectacular violence, all wrapped up in a high-concept horror film that moves the premise of Cube into a merciless vertical structure. It’s grotesque and compelling, like grindhouse [Luis] Buñuel. And it never blinks."
Amy Nicholson of Variety wrote that "the film’s minimalist fury feels like the plays of Samuel Beckett. Massagué and Eguileor are up to being in a zesty Waiting for Godot. And Eguileor's nasty, delightful, occasionally tender performance feels like an audition to play a Bond villain, or perhaps the Spanish resurrection of Hannibal Lecter."
The film garnered new reviews after a surge in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sam Jones in The Guardian suggested it was "the perfect parable for life in the time of the coronavirus and a visceral investigation of how a crisis can expose not only the stratification of human society but also the immutable strands of selfishness coded into our DNA."
Accolades
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| align = "center" rowspan = "15" | 2020 || rowspan = "6" | 7th Feroz Awards || colspan = "2" | Best Drama Film || || rowspan = "6" |
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| Best Director || Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia ||
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| Best Screenplay || David Desola, Pedro Rivero ||
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| Best Supporting Actress || Antonia San Juan ||
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| Best Film Poster || ||
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| Best Trailer || ||
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| rowspan = "3" | 12th Gaudí Awards || colspan = "2" | Best Non-Catalan Language Film || || rowspan = "3" |
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| Best Screenplay || David Desola, Pedro Rivero ||
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| Best Visual Effects || Mario Campoy, Irene Río, Iñaki Madariaga ||
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| 75th CEC Medals || Best New Director || Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia || ||
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| rowspan = "3" | 34th Goya Awards || Best Original Screenplay || David Desola, Pedro Rivero || || rowspan = "3" |
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| Best New Director || Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia ||
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| Best Special Effects || Mario Campoy, Iñaki Madariaga ||
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| 29th Actors and Actresses Union Awards || Best Film Actress in a Secondary Role || Antonia San Juan || || align = "center" |
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| 33rd European Film Awards || Best Visual Effects || Iñaki Madariaga || ||
|}
Sequel
In May 2023, Netflix reported the beginning of filming of a sequel with Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia returning as director and starring Hovik Keuchkerian and Milena Smit.
See also
List of Spanish films of 2019
Stone Soup
Allegory of the long spoons
The Old Man and his Grandson
The Pit and the Pendulum
References
External links
2019 films
2019 science fiction films
2019 horror films
2010s science fiction horror films
Films about cannibalism
Films about food and drink
Films about social class
Spanish prison films
Spanish science fiction horror films
2010s dystopian films
Magic realism films
Fictional buildings and structures
Social science fiction films
Films shot in Bilbao
Spanish survival films
2010s Spanish-language films
2010s Spanish films
Spanish dystopian films