The platform is a Spanish original horror film directed by Halder Gastelu-Urrutia, released in 2019. The picture tells about a vertical prison, consisting of an unknown number of levels. There is a hole in the center of each chamber that opens up a view of a common well. Once a day, a platform descends along it, filled to capacity with food. Inmates are housed in pairs on each floor. The deeper the level is, the less food the prisoners get.
What is the film "Platform" about
The main character is a man named Goreng. He wakes up in a cell with a rectangular hole in the center. Goreng's neighbor is called Trimagashi. He has been in this vertical prison for more than a month and therefore explains to his cellmate the rules of imprisonment.
Once a day, a platform with food goes down the floors of the prison. It only stops for a couple of minutes on each floor, and the prisoners must eat while the platform is on their level. If the prisoner tries to put aside some of the food, he will be punished. The cell will become unbearably cold or hot.
Goreng and Trimagashi are at level forty-eighth, so they only get scraps. Goreng is disgusted, but Trimagashi says that people below the hundredth level rarely get food at all.
All prisoners came to this prison voluntarily, but they had absolutely no idea what kind of confinement awaited them. Each of them could take one thing with them. Goreng took the book about Don Quixote, because he was sincerely sure that he would find himself in some place for self-development, be able to read it and quit smoking. He voluntarily signed a contract of imprisonment for six months. He was also promised to issue an accredited diploma upon release.
Trimagashi is a criminal who inadvertently killed an illegal immigrant. He was offered a choice - to go to a psychiatric hospital or to this prison. He absolutely does not repent and chooses a knife as a permitted subject.
When the platform with food arrives on their floor, Goreng eats the required amount of food and tries to convince the same Trimagashi, but he not only gets drunk from the belly, but also urinates on the leftovers of food, arguing that this is exactly what the people on the lower tiers deserve. ... He hates prisoners equally strongly from above and from below.
Once on the platform, Goreng sees a woman. Trimagashi explains to him that her name is Miharu and once a month she descends to the lower tiers in search of her son. Goreng is shocked that there are also children in this prison.
Once a month, all prisoners are euthanized with gas and transferred to a new floor at random. This is how the main character wakes up at level one hundred and seventy-first. He is tied up because Trimagashi is going to cut off pieces of flesh from him and eat them, since there will be no food left for them on the platform.
For the next 30 days, the platform comes up completely empty. Trimagashi does not give in to Goreng's persuasion to hold out for a month only on the water and cuts off a piece from his leg. At this point, Miharu descends on the platform, who attacks Trimagashi and frees Goreng. He finishes off the old man. Miharu descends on the platform to the lower levels, while Goreng spends the rest of the month eating the corpse.
The next month, Goreng wakes up at Level Thirty-Three with a woman named Imoguiri who has brought a dog as a permitted object. He recognizes the woman - it was she who interviewed him before arriving at the prison.
Imoguiri swears she had no idea what the prison really was like. She calls the hole a vertical self-service center and believes the place is designed as an experiment of spontaneous solidarity. She claims there are two hundred levels. If each person eats only his share of the rationed food, everyone in the prison will be fed.
Imoguiri is in the final stages of cancer, so she decided to voluntarily descend into the hole in order to convince the prisoners to observe spontaneous solidarity. Every day, she begs the inmates below to eat only her dedicated ration and pass her message on, but they only agree when Goreng threatens to smear the food with their shit. Imoguiri says that now people at higher levels need to be convinced as well. Goreng jokes that this will not work, since he does not know how to defecate upwards.
One day, a wounded Miharu arrives on the platform. At night, she kills the dog and goes down on the platform. Imoguiri says the administration does not allow people under the age of 16 into the prison, so Miharu cannot have a son here.
The woman is very worried about killing the dog and refuses to eat, although this is their last day at thirty-third level. The next day, Goreng wakes up on level two hundred and two and sees that Imoguiri has hanged herself. Previously, she claimed that there were only 200 levels, and was disappointed with the experiment when she learned that the administration was lying to her. Goreng thinks she hanged herself so that he had something to eat. The next month, he eats her corpse and, when the time for a new cell comes, wakes up on the sixth level.
His new neighbor turns out to be a man named Bakharat, who is incredibly happy to be at such a high level, because he wants to escape. He has a rope, but he needs the help of the prisoners from the upper tier. Nothing comes out. The prisoner from above simply defecates on Baharat so that he does not climb up the rope.
Goreng decides to fix the hole and convinces Baharat to help him down the platform to the lowest level. While on the platform, they will dispense food to everyone in portions so that it will last up to the last floor. Goreng believes that there are about two hundred and fifty levels, because he counted the time it took for the platform to rise from the bottom of the prison when he was at the two hundredth level.
At one of the highest levels, men meet a sage who convinces them of the senselessness of their plans, since it is necessary to change the consciousness not of prisoners, but of the administration. If workers at zero level see something unusual, they will understand that the prisoners are living people, not animals.
The sage says that the movement needs a symbol that will rise to zero intact. They choose panna cotta - an Italian dessert - as a symbol and decide to guard the dish.
Descending below, the men realize with horror that if there is no living person at the level, then the platform does not stop. That is, Goreng's calculation was wrong, and there could be much more levels.
At one of the levels, Goreng sees two prisoners attacking Mihara. While trying to help, Goreng and Baharat are seriously injured, but do not save Mihara. They continue their descent, delivering long-awaited food to the lower levels.
The men descend to the last level at number three hundred thirty-three. Since there are two prisoners on each floor, the hole is designed for 666 people. Exhausted and wounded men find a child at this level. And although Miharu was looking for a boy, the child turns out to be a girl.
There is no food left for a long time, so the men give the panna cotta to the hungry child. They decide that the message to level zero will not be dessert, but a found girl.
Baharat loses consciousness and dies from blood loss. Goreng takes the girl to the platform. Together they descend into pitch darkness. The main character leaves the platform and remains in absolute emptiness. The platform swiftly lifts the girl up.
The point of the film platform is self-sacrifice. Gorenga, the main character, sacrifices himself at the end of the film for a better future for others.
The meaning of the ending of the film
It is difficult to explain the ending of the film because it is too open, so I would like to give some theories. My main theory is that Goreng and Baharat are dying from the wounds they received while trying to save Mihara. Everything that happens after that is only in the mind of Goreng when he dies.
They reach the metaphorical level of 333, which gives the administration a diabolical perspective to conduct their gruesome experiment with 666 people. Goreng tries to destroy the system, but unfortunately dies trying. An analogy can be drawn with all those people who gave their lives to plan the assassination of Hitler, but in the end their mission failed.
Floor 333 was very strange. The level did not heat up or freeze when the pankota was stored. There is no reason to break the rule for just one floor. There is a child who is absolutely not afraid of anything and looks too clean to be at the lowest level. Even if it was Miharu's baby, she would not have been able to feed the baby for a whole month. The prisoners are shuffled every month, so the administration is well aware of the child's existence. They have no reason to allow this child to fall into the hole, despite their published rule of "over 16 years of age."
If the child were serving the Administration for a specific purpose, the film would hint at the nature of that purpose, but it is not. And here's my favorite argument. Have you seen the speed with which this platform climbed back up? It does not slow down even on the upper floors, otherwise the prisoners would climb on it and run away. If the platform with the child suddenly stops at level 0 at this rate, the child simply will not survive. What I'm trying to say is that the characters in the film have no escape.
Who is this kid in the movie "Platform"?
Goreng owes his life to Miharu as she saved him from Trimagashi. But he cannot return her favor, and she was stabbed to death. He is mortally wounded and dies with regret in his heart.
"I am sorry that I did not fulfill my mission, that I could not save Mihara."
In his dying mind, this manifests as the daughter of Miharu, who is indeed in the pit. Goreng only imagines a child. The child represents purity. Goreng steps off the platform and allows the child to rise as he is a message that does not need a messenger.
The end of Platform is metaphorical because Goreng dies believing he has changed this place. But the sad reality is that the pit continues to hurt its prisoners.
Write in the comments your assumptions and theories about what and what is the meaning of the film "Platform". We will be looking forward to it!
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