The Platform-review
Last week, I was with my friends on a first after corona night out. Bars were finally open, so we took the opportunity to outside and have a drink. While talking about our quarantine life, I got a recommendation to watch „The Platform”. The movie was making rounds on Netflix and was for a moment the most talked thing on Instagram. The film is Spanish and although I don’t like watching movies made outside English speaking countries, I still decided to download it and take a look.
The movie is a horror-thriller about vertical prison filled with gluttony and cannibalism. The official name of the prison is Vertical Self-Management Center, but people trapped inside just call it The Hole. Our protagonist Goreng (Ivan Massagué) wakes up in this VSC, a concrete room with a big hole in the middle. Once a day table- the platform drops, and prisoners have two minutes to eat leftovers from those above. Apparently, there is enough food for everyone, if everybody only ate what they need. Soon we find out that this isn’t the case as top floor dwellers overeat so by the time platform reaches lower levels, there is no more food left, leaving prisoners no other option but to kill and eat each other.
The movie serves up a creepy visual and narrative metaphor for class stratification. It explores the dark side of capitalism, the effects of which are even more obvious today in a time of global coronavirus pandemic. We see panic shopping, price gouging of basic necessities, scammers offering fake tests, countries competing for respirators. In The Platform decision of the select few determine survival of those below.
The movie is an excellent food for thought, making us think about all the flaws in the system we live in.
By Mirsad Mešić
Projekt je financiran s strani Evropske komisije. Vsebina objave odraža izključno stališča avtorja. Nacionalna agencija ter Evropska komisija nista odgovorni za kakršno koli uporabo informacij, ki jih objava vsebuje.
