- In this sci-fi allegory by Spanish director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, prisoners housed in vertical cell blocks dictate how much food to leave those in floors below
- The film draws some painful conclusions about humanity’s primal nature and willingness to exploit the weak, all done with a brilliantly barbed sense of humour
4/5 stars
Trickle-down economics is served up at its most literal and unpalatable in The Platform, a brutalist sci-fi allegory by Spanish director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia.
In the film, prisoners within a towering high-rise structure fight it out for food, delivered on a descending monolithic slab of concrete. It falls to the inmates, confined two to each floor, to leave sufficient repast for those below, but with great power comes, for many, the temptation to exploit and deprive those less fortunate.
Winner of the Midnight Madness Audience Award at last year's Toronto International Film Festival, The Platform seasons its robust economics creed with devilishly dark humour, and a palpable sense of danger.
We are drawn into this nightmare by Goreng (Ivan Massague), who volunteers for a six-month stretch in an effort to quit smoking and finally read Don Quixote. Every month, inmates are moved to a different floor, and partnered with a new cellmate, ranging from violet criminals to political prisoners, and occasionally even undocumented residents.
Goreng encounters a range of different cellmates with differing views. Some, like Trimagasi (Zorion Eguileor) the murderer, are only too willing to spoil what food he cannot consume himself, while the compassionate Imoguiri (Antonia San Juan) uses her time at the trough to prepare carefully balanced portions for those below.
The Platform opens with a montage of careful food preparation, as chefs clad in pristine white slave over their delectable creations, before placing them on the platform as part of a vast buffet of culinary delights.
In theory, the platform holds enough food for every inmate to eat their fill, but as it begins its descent, through hundreds of floors and hungry mouths, this bountiful offering quickly transforms into a mess of soiled and regurgitated waste that inevitably leaves many asking for more.
As if Bong Joon-ho's Snowpiercer was upended, and the head of the train became the penthouse kitchen, Gaztelu-Urrutia's film is similarly unsympathetic towards the wealthy and wasteful, while conceding that the needy will turn on one another just as quickly.
Gorging on the dystopian fears of Orwell and Huxley, Gaztelu-Urrutia draws some painful conclusions about humanity's primal nature, and our willingness to exploit the weak.
But the director also retains his brilliantly barbed sense of humour throughout, taking great pleasure in provoking a sustained queasiness in his audience during The Platform's moments of visceral violence and grotesque gluttony. The results might occasionally be hard to stomach, but they are not easily forgotten.
Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook
Copyright (c) 2020. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.