Six months after its premier at Toronto's International Film Festival, Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia's The Platform arrived on Netflix, the perfect watch for a journée ennuyante in quarantine. Gaztelu-Urrutia's high intensity psychological thriller/ sci-fi lays bare the evils of wealth inequality under capitalism, asking that its viewers reflect on their own perceptions of the system and whether it's as glamorous as it seems. Given the nature of the film and its engagement with historical-political th- capitalism, communism, equality, chivalry - it behoves me to offer a more nuanced analysis.
The film's young protagonist Goreng (meaning "fried" in Indonesian) awakens in a concrete cell marked along its side with the number 48. His cell-mate, Trimagsi, is an older man who has been in the complex for quite some time. Trimagsi (meaning "thank you" in Malay/ Indonesian) explains the structure of the prison to Goreng: they are both in a tower-like facility in which food is delivered via a descending platform that starts on Level 1 (the top), stopping for a fixed time on each floor. Each month, they are randomly assigned a new level, which determines the amount of food they shall receive (the lower down they are, the less food they are left with). Each prisoner is allowed to bring one item with them into the prison (a cherished belonging, a useful tool, a weapon). Goreng brings a copy of Cervantes' Don Quixote (1605), while Trimagsi brings a self-sharpening knife.
There are a few reasons why Goreng's chosen item is important in the film. Firstly, it helps us to identify him as a scholar, a character-archetype who reads and thinks about larger issues that might be a/effecting the collective (the textual). Additionally, by inserting a text (Don Quixote) into another text (The Platform), the director might also be suggesting that we read the film through the fabric of Cervantes' masterpiece, which is often cited as the first European novel (the meta-textual). In this sense, given that both Alonso Quixano and Goreng value helping others and performing acts of chivalry and charity, the director might also be engaging in narrative mirroring, yet another textual device used to construct meaning in the film (the inter-textual). And finally (building on this last point), if we accept that Don Quixote is central to the film's interpretation - which I argue it is - then Gaztelu-Urrutia might too be commenting upon the linearity of European/ Hispanic artistic and cultural production, perhaps contending that there exists a web of tropes and motifs linking the old to the new.
Back to the film. In his ordeal, Goreng discovers a woman named Miharu who claims to have birthed a child in the tower, subsequently losing it. This morsel of truth, that there is a child somewhere in the tower, is consistently refuted by the other characters, leading Goreng (in his weakened, almost emaciated state) to question the nature of truth itself. Will he find the child? Will he manage to convince those above and below him to share the food? Will this literature-loving intellect survive the turmoils of the prison?
I will now stop discussing the narrative of the film, lest I spoil its golden ending, and will move onto its review.
I thought the film was exceptional, exceeding both my own expectations as well as the expectations of my housemates. For its engagement with concepts that could not be more relevant at a time like this (equality, distribution of resources, fair treatment of others) as well as its engagement with the wider corpus of European cultural production, I give this film...
4.5/5.
Let me know what you think by commenting below.
BP x
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Image credit: Dani Di Placido, Senior Contributor for Forbes. See above link.