Director: Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia
Writers: David Desola, Pedro Rivero
Cast: Ivan Massagué, Zorion Eguileor, Antonia San Juan, Emilio Buale, Alexandra Masangkay, Zihara Llana
Runtime: 94 mins.
2020
The Platform was, as I understand it, the first breakout streaming hit of quarantine. I take some dark pleasure in knowing that so many folks became quarantined and rushed to watch a political allegory about being trapped, complete with graphic depictions of cannibalism. And a scene where a turd is ejected from an ass directly into a face.
The story of The Platform is almost entirely contained within a peculiarly designed prison. The cells are stacked vertically. Two people to a cell, with a hole in the middle of the floor and ceiling. Every day, the titular Platform descends one floor at a time, loaded with a banquet of delicacies. Greedy for nourishment, those on the upper floors stuff their faces until the titular Platform moves on. By the time the titular Platform gets a few dozen floors down, the food is picked clean. Those on the floors below are left to starve.
Perhaps the single most impressive thing about The Platform is that cinematographer Jon D. Domínguez manages to keep the film interesting. Production Designer Azegiñe Urigoitia has done great work to make the austere environment appropriately soul-crushing, but staring at the same dull set for so long should be tedious. Instead, it only becomes tiresome as the film stretches on, at which point we are at least preoccupied by movement between floors.
The film's greatest weapon, though, is Trimagasi (Zorion Eguileor). Eguileor enraptures us despite being given scene after scene of exposition to shovel. There's a perverse glee in the way Trimagasi chooses to educate the protagonist. We want to trust him because he is our anchor, but we cannot forget the devilish glint in his eyes as he talks about his favorite knives. We have to rely on him for survival, but we cannot shake the concern that he may snap at any moment. We like him because of his dad jokes, but we hate his trivialization of so much trauma. When the premise works, it is because Eguileor does so much work to sell that this man has been shaped by a crude, unforgiving environment.
At a certain point his role in the film is drastically reduced, and it becomes a plod to the finish line after that. It's no coincidence that this point is also where the cracks in the allegory become too prominent to ignore. The Platform exposes us to a whole lot of grizzly nihilism in service of its ostensibly hard-hitting social critique, but it ultimately cannot follow through on the promise of that critique. Why is it specifically prisoners who are being tortured in this way? And if it's important that those punished are prisoners, why have our protagonist voluntarily commit himself? Is it because he needs to have some moral high ground to incite revolution? Why?
Perhaps the worst nail in the allegorical coffin is that every month, the prisoners are all gassed so that they can be randomly shuffled between floors. This adds a nice sense of unpredictable dread to the proceedings, but doesn't track so well with the metaphor. People are nasty to those below them, yes. Receiving abuse can in turn create learned behavior that trickles down to those who are below, yes. But what social system periodically reconfigures its structure of power and privilege? Any specificity of interpretation collapses under scrutiny. The message seems to reduce itself to people sure can be nasty sometimes, and they shouldn't be.
I certainly don't need an allegory to be airtight for me to enjoy it; I have a great affection for The Cube, for example. The difference is that the titular Cube is a hell of a lot of fun to explore, both visually and conceptually. The Platform makes a point of being monotonous and difficult to stomach, so when its high-minded posturing does not bear fruit, there's not a whole lot left going for it.
2 / 5 BLOBS
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