Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia

(Netflix Streaming, September 2020) To its credit, it doesn’t take a long time for The Platform to hit us on the head with its blunt metaphor for capitalism. Our characters are stuck in a multi-storey prison, and once every day a platform slowly makes it way down the hundreds of cells to allow them to eat. But the sadistic part of it is that all the food is on the platform at once. No refills. You can’t hoard food, but there’s no way to stop people on the upper floor to eat all they want, leaving increasingly little food as the platform goes down, leaving those lower-floor prisoners to fend off for themselves. This is one of those movies where the metaphor takes over credibility—It’s impossible to treat this as something plausible, leaving only the parable. But this isn’t the problem that you may expect—for one thing, The Platform makes no attempt at softening the nightmarish nature of its story. Murder, cannibalism and meanness are essential graphic elements of the plot, and those with sensitive nature are almost assured to quit halfway through. But for those who stick around, the blunt-force symbolism will find a tight, mean Science Fiction fable à la Cube that keeps on exploring the implications and possibilities of its premise. Sociopolitical commentary is an essential part of the result, and it’s the kind of thing to make viewers think about the film long after they’ve seen it. It’s notable that the film, first shown at TIFF’s Midnight Madness and then bought for distribution by Netflix, has steadily grown in recognition through word-of-mouth, earning a wide audience during the great pandemic lockdown of 2020. It’s actually worth the hype: directed with sober realism by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, it benefits from strong acting performance by a surprisingly large cast (considering its premise) anchored by Iván Massagué and Zorion Eguileor. It also, surprisingly enough for me to say (because I’d rather have things spelled out and over-explained), benefits from an ending that cuts early, leaving just enough to the imagination. This being a metaphor, it would have been reduced and possibly nullified by any kind of explanation or definitive conclusion. (As a metaphor for current society, it also managed to imply that we can only make changes for the better without necessarily knowing for sure how they’re going to turn out—we can only hope that the children will be better off.) For a film that was nowhere near my radar until I saw it climb up the viewing charts of 2019 movies, I’m surprised, pleased and unsettled by The Platform: Despite the lack of plausibility, it’s a nice example of what’s possible even for low-budget films with an imaginative script and some pointed social commentary. That it happens to be on Netflix alongside the not-dissimilar Circle is just extra icing on the cake in the middle of the (streaming) platform.