The Platform (film)

Goreng wakes in a concrete cell marked with the number 48. His cellmate, Trimagasi, explains that they are in a "Vertical Self-Management Center" aka "The Pit", a tower-style facility in which food is delivered via a platform that travels from the top down, stopping for a fixed period on each floor. Those on lower levels can eat only what those above leave, and the cell is heated or cooled to fatal temperatures if anyone tries to keep any of the food.

People are randomly reassigned to a new level each month. Each resident is allowed to bring one item in with them, Goreng choosing a copy of Don Quixote, and Trimagasi a self-sharpening knife. Trimagasi reveals that when assigned to level 132, he and his former cellmate cannibalized a resident who had fallen down the shaft. One day, a bloodied woman named Miharu rides down on the platform. Trimagasi explains that she descends the pit every month in search of her child.

As they talk, it is revealed that Goreng volunteered to spend six months in the facility in exchange for a diploma, and Trimagasi is serving a year-long sentence for manslaughter. Over the first month, they become friends, but on the day of the room shuffle, Goreng wakes up tied to his bed. They have been reassigned to level 171, where the platform is expected to be empty of food when it arrives. Trimagasi explains that he plans to cut strips of Goreng's flesh to sustain them both, and if Goreng is complicit, he may survive. On the eighth day, Trimagasi grows weaker and starts cutting into Goreng's leg but is attacked by Miharu as she comes down the platform. She frees Goreng and he kills Trimagasi. Miharu cuts out some of Trimagasi's flesh, feeding Goreng and eating some herself. She nurses Goreng, but leaves on the platform when he asks her about her child. On the night before the shuffle, Goreng is haunted by Trimagasi, who explains that they are now both one and the same and that Trimagasi will never leave him.

In the third month, Goreng awakes on level 33 with a woman, Imoguiri, and her dog, Rameses the 2nd. Goreng recognizes her as the Administration official who interviewed him before sending him to the cells. She says that she was unaware of the horrible conditions and volunteered to try to fix things when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Imoguiri rations her food and attempts to convince the men on level 34 to do so as well, but they ignore her. Two weeks pass and Goreng threatens to defecate on the food if they do not, and it works. The two begin to argue over their methods of persuasion.

One day, Miharu arrives injured, so Goreng and Imoguiri nurse her back to health. Goreng mentions Miharu's search for her child to Imoguiri, but Imoguiri says that children under 16 are not allowed into the facility and Miharu entered alone. Goreng awakens the following month on level 202 and finds that Imoguiri has hanged herself. Plagued with visions of Trimagasi and Imoguiri, Goreng eats her flesh to survive, experiencing hallucinations of Trimagasi instructing him to do so.

At the start of the fifth month, Goreng is assigned to level 6. His new cellmate, Baharat, attempts unsuccessfully to climb to the upper level to try to escape. Estimating that there are 250 levels, Goreng convinces Baharat to ride the platform down with him, rationing the food so all get a share. They decide to protect the food until they get below level 50, from there, they'll start to pass out the food. One of the prisoners, the wise Sr. Brambang, convinces them to send a symbolic message to the administration in the form of leaving a single dish untouched (a panna cotta). As they descend further, they hand out portions to the prisoners, attacking those who refuse to cooperate. On the way, they encounter Miharu fighting two other inmates and try to save her, but she is killed and they are severely injured. Goreng and Baharat continue to descend, eventually reaching level 333 where the platform stops. Goreng notices a child - Miharu's daughter - hiding under the bed. He gets off the platform, followed hesitantly by Baharat, only to have the platform continue downward, leaving them behind. Despite Baharat's reluctance, they feed the girl the untouched panna cotta they had saved as a "message" for the Administrators at the top.

Goreng passes out and dreams of Baharat telling him that "the girl is the message." The next day, Goreng finds Baharat dead, having bled out from his injuries. Goreng takes the child with him when the platform arrives. They descend to the bottom of the pit, where he once again hallucinates Trimagasi, who tells him that "the message requires no bearer." Goreng gets off the platform and walks away with Trimagasi, both turning to watch as the girl ascends on top of the platform.

Cast and crew members at a press conference in October 2019.

• Iván Massagué as Goreng, named after gorèng, which means "fried" in Indonesian/Malay.
• Zorion Eguileor (eu) 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 Coka as Baharat, named after baharat, which means spice in Arabic used in Middle Eastern, Turkish and Greek cuisines.
• Alexandra Masangkay as Miharu. named after 見張る, 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.
• Mario Pardo as Baharat's friend
• Txubio Fernández de Jáuregui as Chef

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 "socialist systems".[5] 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.[5] "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.[6]

The cement 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.[5] 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.[5] The director says the vertical tower of cells "represents the dehumanized coldness of the Vertical Self-Management Center".[6]

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."[6] 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.[6]

The director acknowledges that 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.[5] 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".[6]

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".[5] 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.[6]

The film was released in Spain on 8 November 2019 by Festival Films.[1] 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.[7]

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 80% based on 89 reviews, with an average rating of 7.13/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "While it may feel muddled at times, The Platform is an inventive and captivating dystopian thriller."[8] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 73 out of 100, based on 15 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[9]

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."[10]

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."[2]

The film has garnered new reviews after surging 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."[11]

• Stone Soup
• Allegory of the long spoons

• The Platform at IMDb
• The Platform at Rotten Tomatoes