The Platform is something you shouldn’t watch if you are easily disgusted by blood, mutilation, and gore. This movie is known for its message of understanding life and how we view one another, so if you do have the stomach for the movie you should watch it. The Platform gives a deep meaning with its excessive use of verses from the Bible that many could understand.
The filmmaker Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia is a film and advertising director and producer, not to mention a business management graduate specializing in international trade. Bilbao was born in 1974. Galder said, “Humanity will have to move towards the fair distribution of wealth.” The Platform is a good example of humans thinking they are above one another rather than seeing the bigger picture of everyone being on an equal level. Even though this movie was a low budget film, it was still a perfect showing of Galder’s vision and message.
The Platform is a thriller set in what sounds like a stodgy WeWork facility. These people or prisoners are trapped inside a room with no windows or doors, just a roommate. The only opening they have is a 16-foot hole in both the ceiling and floor where food is descended from the first floor to the last floor which is level 333 (spoiler). The main character Goreng wakes up and learns that he is in a concrete reformatory composed of hundreds of levels. Each day an elaborate feast is laid out on the titular platform, which drops from floor to floor. Each level can only eat the leftover of those above. There’s supposedly enough food for everyone if the prisoners only eat what they need but most don’t. The platform’s brutalist portrait of real-life inequality is not hard to understand right now, during an unprecedented global pandemic. The decisions of a select few in the highest echelons determine the survival of those below them. This could be interpreted as a parallel to what is happening to us during the COVID-19 crisis. The platform hints at a reworking of the system. At the end of the movie, Goreng makes his way down to the final floor and finds a little girl that shouldn’t be allowed. The whole reasoning behind it is a mystery. Goreng eventually sent her to the top as a message of how this would affect the children without anyone knowing because they are so worried about themselves.
An interview with Bianca Goodwin about her thoughts while watching The Platform was interesting. She said, “I don’t know what I just watched, this movie really shows how people treat each other because of the placement they are in, like leaving people at the bottom to starve or fight for their lives”. She’s right, people who have more than others might tend to think only of themselves. As long as they eat and survive they don’t care about the ones that are starving around them, to the point they could do something harmful to others. If you haven’t watched this movie you should and please have the right mindset as you watch.
