The 2019 Spanish sci-fi thriller/ horror is still one of my most adored recent movies. The gory open-ended movie left me with so many unanswered questions. I actually saw something similar in my dream which led me to watch it again. Even the second time around, the movie was consistently just as disturbing and impressive as it was during the first watch.
I have to give massive props to the director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia. What an incredible debut movie by the director. He found it within himself to leave the audience gripping to their seats, not wanting to watch the story play out but also eager to know how the entire thing pans out. I must say, honestly, the movie has left me a little unnerved.
Gore, cannibalism, murder, violence, abuse, the movie has it all. But it is not a simple visual thriller. These inhuman acts are just a piece of the entire, extremely horrific, puzzle set. Please do not watch this if you are squeamish. I thought I had grown a very strong stomach but The Platform really put my belief to test.
It is not the extreme actions the characters in the movie play that make you belch. It is the situation they are put in which forces them into extra decisions, and that makes you belch. Or at least made me. Even after watching the movie twice, I am still unclear what it is about the movie that makes me want to relate to the story so much. I kept asking myself "What would I do?"
The story is based in this stage building called "the hole". It is a massive concrete structure where the protagonist, Goreng, has voluntarily accepted to live for the next 6 months. He goes through meticulous and detailed interviews to make it to The Hole. He decides it would be a perfect place for him to quit smoking and will leave the place with a diploma.
The Hole is a giant concrete building with a big hole in the middle of each floor. There are two people living on each floor. The floors are numbered from 0 at the top and go down numerically. Once a day a platform with food descends from above and the people on the floor can eat from there. They cannot keep the food, and whatever remains on the platform is sent down to the next and so on. Every month the people of The Hole are repositioned on a different floor. Also, you cannot hoard food, or else you'll either be frozen or cooked to death.
So, The Hole is everything other than what Goreng had expected. Unlike him, his "holemate" was put in here for a crime he had committed. He was given two choices, psych ward or The Hole. Later in the movie Goreng is paired with his interviewer who also joins The Hole voluntarily. In return, she'd get a fitting treatment for her cancer. But she also tells Goreng that she didn't know what The Hole actually was even though she worked for the administration for years.
The food obviously gets lesser and lesser the more the platform descends to the lower floors. So obviously, the upper floors eat as much as they can and the lower floors get almost nothing. The greed is rooted into the uncertain future of the hole dwellers. They are unsure if they'll be sent down or up the next month. So if they are placed on the upper floors they eat as much as they can since they are in a better place and do not care about the rest. The lower floor people only hope they'll be placed higher in the next month and hence the cycle continues.
This creates an exciting conundrum. The people on the lower floors are usually left with little to nothing by the time the platform arrives. This leads them to either murder their holemate for human meat or do the evilest things you can imagine in a hungry stomach for survival. Should the people on top be more rational and save some food for the others below, or enjoy the nicer things while they have it? Even if they do, will the others follow? Will the people who come up on the higher floors in the next month be as kind?
What would you do?
One interesting thing about the movie is that the people on the lower floors commit heinous crimes to survive. But on the other hand, the people on the upper floors often jump to their deaths through the hole. Goreng's first holemate explained the suicides by saying that even though they have the best of foods, they also have way too much to think about and kill themselves.
The movie's ending is the most confusing part. Goreng is placed in one of the higher floors where they get a lot of nice food. But he decides enough is enough. In the few months he had spent in The Hole he was almost murdered for meat, he murdered someone, he saw a dog killed and he saw other humans killed. It was too much for him. So he decides to make a change with his holemate.
They both decide to ride the platform and ration the food to each floor which will eventually mean that everybody on each floor will have something to eat. They decide they'll use brute force to stop anyone from taking more than required.
On one of the floors, they meet a friend of Baharat's (Gorneg's current holemate). The wise man tells Baharat that rationing food isn't enough. They'd have to send a message to the administration to trigger a change. The message would be sending back an untouched piece of food which would be a metaphor for the people of the hole working together.
They decide the Panna Cotta would be the message. So no matter what they'd have to ration food for all and protect the Panna Cotta at all costs. In this journey both of them get severely injured. Also, they see a lot of floors have no one alive in them. People have killed each other.
They reach the final floor on the brink of death. Floor 333. It is impossible to imagine how did people ever live in these floors all the way down to 333. But there they find a little hungry girl and eventually decide to give the Panna Cotta to her. Baharat dies, and Goreng realizes that the girl is the message and sends her up to floor 0 on the platform as he himself walks away with the soul (or imagination) of his first holemate.
My theories.
#1
The movie is one huge gory metaphor of political injustice and greed. It could be about capitalism and how the people in the lower levels get little to nothing and commit heinous crimes to survive or simply die with hopes of making it to the top. The people on the top, on the other hand, care less about the people below and enjoy the nicer things as much as possible before realizing that the hole in their hearts will never be filled and eventually give up. Communism, which Goreng tried, is always bound to fail because humans cannot be relied on for sharing and caring.
However, I did come across a statement by the director where denies the movie being anything being about politics. So let's have this theory as the most fitting fan's theory.
#2
The rules are hearsay and are mostly wrong. Goreng learns almost everything about the hole from his first holemate, the murderer. Eat as much as you can while you have it, fuck the people on the lower floors, you can't hoard food, yadda yadda. However, only one rule was tested and true - cannot hoard food. What if the other rules were all made by a scummy holemate like the murderer and passed down to everyone?
#3
The little girl in level 333 was Goreng's dying imagination. This makes sense since it is next to impossible that a little girl could survive in level 333. Also Imoguiri, the lady with cancer from the administration said Goreng that under 16s were not allowed in The Hole.
He also walks away with his first holemate's soul which means he was also dead since this time the soul touched Goreng's shoulder which it had never done before. Also, in the final scene Goreng is weak almost at the brink of death, so how could he walk?
He may not have sent the girl on the platform, but instead he sent the actual panna cotta. His hungry and malnourished brain must have imagined the girl and he wanted to protect her and send her up. But in reality, it was the panna cotta.
#3
The Hole is a massive scale experiment. I thought of this since almost everyone here is in The Hole to get something in return, all they had to do was survive. They are here either by choice, as a punishment, or in hopes to receive something as massive as cancer treatment. Indirectly, people volunteer to come to the hole and the experiment continues.
#4
The Panna Cotta made its way to the administration and nothing changed. I say this because there is a scene of the kitchen in level 0 where the food is made with extreme care and luxuriously. There is no room for error in that kitchen. But the kitchen finds a plate of panna cotta with a strand of hair in it and the supervisor is mad about the hair.
This shows that the panna cotta is the one Goreng sent up because there is no way a completed panna cotta would have a strand of hair in it within the kitchen. However, instead of taking it as a message the kitchen as more bothered with the hair. As if, the food was sent back because it wasn't up to mark.
Part of the administration doesn't know anything. Imoguiri confessed that she didn't know what was happening in the hole even though she worked for years with the administration. That is the first clue. The second clue is in the kitchen with the panna cotta and strand of hair. This means only the real game master is aware of The Hole and the rest just do their jobs.
#5
They should have eaten what they had ordered. One of the questions in Goreng's interview was what is his favorite food. Imoguiri said that she asked the question so that it could be added to the menu. He later finds the exact snail dish on the platform. This means that everyone in The Hole had ordered one specific thing and it was added to the platform.
If everyone would only eat what they had said in the interview, then all the people would have just enough to eat and survive. I also think this is an original rule that later disappeared because of the hearsay rules.
The Platform is an intense movie with a very confusing ending. There are plenty of questions that will forever remain unanswered. However you watch the movie, as a political message, as a survival movie, or whatever, it is difficult to imagine what you would do if you were in the hole. I believe The Platform has one of the best endings ever. However, I do not think there will be a sequel since the original is so damn good.
Give it a watch!
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