The Platform
It's interesting to consider how the TIFF Midnight Audience Award winner "The Platform" would have tracked a decade ago. It would have had a limited theatrical release, gaining a cult following in midnight screenings around the world before really catching fire on DVD as a word-of-mouth genre hit. All of those steps are gone in 2020, and it's now on Netflix for millions of people to watch this weekend. Of course, access to good films—and this is a good film—is what matters, especially during a quarantine, but I wonder if it will get the same traction as it's buried on an overcrowded service as it would have if people had passed it along the old-fashioned way. Seek it out. Tell your friends. It's worth a look.
The concept of "The Platform" is undeniably clever. Almost the entire film takes place in a sort of futuristic or Camus-esque structure called "The Hole." Hundreds of floors tall, it is a prison in which people are placed on floors two at a time. Every day, a platform descends through a large hole in the middle of the building, and it's the only chance for food for the entire day. On level 1, the prisoners have access to a feast of lovingly prepared dishes. If everyone only ate a small ration, it could make it all the way to the bottom with something for each prisoner. It never does.
Our eyes into this nightmare belong to Goreng ( Ivan Massagué ), who volunteered to enter the prison to quit smoking and read a book (everyone is allowed one item), without fully understanding what he was in for. His first cellmate explains the process of The Hole to Goreng as the film opens on level 48. By that time, there are usually some leftovers on the platform. But the evilest part of this system, and arguably the film's most clever societal insight, is that inmates change floors every month. So you could be relatively happy on 8 one day and then on 133 the next day. And if you're wondering how these people survive when they're on the lower floors, you might not be ready for the grisly place this movie goes.
The social parable is clear—if the haves didn't take more than they needed, there would be enough for the have-nots. However, writers David Desola & Pedro Rivero and director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia aren't content to merely sit back on that idea, expanding on it and unpacking it with each new development. It's a film with multiple impressive twists given its limited setting, and each of them casts a new light on how the movie is supposed to reflect society. I particularly found fascinating the way the changing floors impacted people who had been on lower levels before but were now lucky enough to be high. Rather than be sympathetic to those in a place they just were, they seem to take even more, making up for lost time and aware they might not get this close to the top ever again.
"The Platform" is also a grisly, gnarly horror film, one that becomes surprisingly bathed in blood during its action-heavy final act. The structure has led to comparisons to "Cube" and " Snowpiercer ," but it also reminded me of brutal action films like those in "The Raid" series. Ultimately, however, what makes "The Platform" work is that it stands on its own. It's not just a remix of ideas from other films, a daring piece of genre filmmaking. And, of course, like everything, it has a different energy now. As we see how society functions (or fails to do so) in the face of one of history's most devastating crises, take some time out and watch "The Platform," a funhouse mirror reflection of our world.
Brian Tallerico
Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.
- Antonia San Juan as Imoguiri
- Ivan Massagué as Goreng
- Algis Arlauskas as
- Alexandra Masangkay as Miharu
- Eric Goode as Sr. Brambang
- Miriam Martín as
- Emilio Buale as Baharat
- Zorion Eguileor as Trimagasi
- Óscar Oliver as
- Aránzazu Calleja
- David Desola
- Pedro Rivero
- Haritz Zubillaga
- Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia
Cinematographer
- Jon D. Domínguez
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When Goreng (Ivan Massagué) wakes up in a concrete cell at the beginning of the mind-bending Spanish sci-fi/horror movie The Platform , he doesn’t quite know where he is or who the man is sitting across from him. At first, it seems like The Platform is going to be one of those thrillers about a group of people who suddenly find themselves in a hostile environment with no idea what’s going on, how they got there or how to escape. But while the bizarre setting of the movie recalls head-trip cult favorites like Cube or 2015’s Circle , it turns out that Goreng knows exactly how he got where he is: He volunteered.
And he mostly knows where he is, although he doesn’t know everything about the bizarre, arbitrary rules of the place, which has the bland bureaucratic designation of Vertical Self-Management Center, what people inside call "the Hole" (that’s the literal translation of the movie’s Spanish title). In the middle of Goreng’s concrete cell is a massive rectangular hole, through which he can see many levels above and many levels below, each with two other occupants.
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Once a day, a giant platform descends from the top to the bottom, stopping briefly on each level for the inmates to eat. At the beginning, it’s covered in a massive spread of decadent dishes, prepared by an exacting culinary staff. By the time it gets below halfway, though, it’s mostly empty, the inhabitants of the upper levels having picked it clean. Goreng’s cellmate Trimagasi (Zorion Eguileor) explains this concept to him dismissively, writing it off as "obvious" (his favorite word) and scoffing at Goreng’s moral objections.
The movie never explains the existence or purpose of the VSMC, and only makes vague references to the "administration" of the unnamed country in the unnamed time period when the story takes place. Goreng is allowed to voluntarily commit himself, spending six months in exchange for an "accredited diploma" at the end, while the older Trimagasi has been sentenced to the VSMC as punishment for a crime (which he recounts in a darkly funny story). Ultimately it doesn’t really matter why the place exists, or why anyone is there. Once someone enters, they have to stay until their time is up, being moved every 30 days to a different level.
It’s a brutal, violent existence, which Trimagasi endures with a somewhat demented smile (and his conviction that everything about it is "obvious"), but that Goreng immediately attempts to rebel against. As he’s moved from level to level, he meets other inmates who are interested in upending the system, but their efforts are almost always in vain, undone by the inherent greed of human nature. The people on the top levels will always gorge themselves on food, leaving nothing for the starving people at the bottom, who resort to violence and cannibalism to survive. It’s a blunt, bleak metaphor for capitalism and class warfare.
Beyond that, The Platform is an intense, disturbing horror movie, full of stomach-churning violence and casual sadism, but that’s how the filmmakers (director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia and screenwriters David Desola and Pedro Rivero) convey the true depravity of this place that some people see as a viable alternative to whatever dystopia must exist outside its walls. Goreng starts out as a sympathetic figure, one of the only people inside the VSMC who seems to care about anyone’s well-being other than his own, but it doesn’t take long before he’s forced to betray his principles in the name of self-interest.
At the same time, the movie isn’t completely hopeless, and even after Goreng does what he said he would never do, finding himself haunted by fellow inmates who are no longer around, he reaches some measure of solidarity with other idealists (or former idealists). The movie ends on a sort of confused, ambiguous note that feels like a bit of a cop-out, but providing easy answers would have been even more dissatisfying. The world of The Platform is limited and insular, but it represents a larger society that has no simple solutions for its many inequalities.
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Social commentary aside, The Platform is a gorgeously designed movie, with the stark concrete walls and endless empty spaces above and below creating a sense of the isolation and despair that the characters feel. Within these limited spaces, the filmmakers find ways to creatively depict their characters’ interactions, and the performances are sympathetic without being manipulative. Massagué makes Goreng likable and easy to root for, even when he does horrendous things.
There are moments of extreme gore, but they’re never gratuitous, always serving to move the plot forward or emphasize the horrible choices made inside the VSMC every day. It’s scary to think that the real world is like the VSMC, even a little bit, but it’s also bracing to see the horror of human nature presented in such stark, unblinking fashion.
Starring Ivan Massagué, Zorion Eguileor, Antonia San Juan, Emilio Buale and Alexandra Masangkay, The Platform debuts Friday on Netflix.
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