(Electronic music)
- (Michael) Hey Wisecrack, Michael here - obviously. Today we’re here to unpack the film with
the absolute grossest sound design -
(Gross chewing noises)
- (Michael) The Platform. The sleeper hit, which premiered in 2019 and came to Netflix
in 2020, intrigued a lot of people as they slipped into their own personal socially-distanced
hell.
The film seems made for Wisecrack. A simple, gross premise as a political allegory is basically
as irresistible to us as an all-you-can-eat taco buffet. But I wouldn’t be here if there
wasn’t something bothering me about this film. Specifically: Is it as smart as it thinks
it is?
Let’s find out in this Wisecrack Edition on The Platform: Is it Deep or Dumb?
And spoilers ahead.
The Platform follows the young idealist Goreng in a “vertical self-management center,”
which is bureaucrat speak for a food-themed purge prison. Inside the concrete walls anything
goes, well, almost anything.
Prisoners are free to be a gluttonous as possible, sh*t on their fellow inmates, murder them,
eat them, or do none of the above and just chill out with a good book. While all of this
is happening, prisoners are served food once a day through a floating dumbwaiter containing
elegant, even decadent dishes. As the dumbwaiter makes its way through each of the levels of
the very tall prison, the tasty feast is quickly consumed and defiled by the prisoners closest
to the top, until nothing is left for the prisoners below.
The basic message of the film doesn’t need a Wisecrack breakdown to decode it: The prison
allegedly makes enough food to feed everyone, but the greed of those at the top condemns
those at the bottom to die from starvation. Get it - it’s capitalism. Now, if the film
were just this - it’d get a big ol’ dumb from us. Believe it or not, paying Nicolas
Cage to look into a camera and whisper “the only thing you have to lose is your chains”
is not enough for a Wisecrack “deep” certification.”
Nor does having a guy that kinda looks like Jesus at times or a 333-story building with
2 prisoners per floor which means there are *gasp* 666 people! But there IS more to this
film than that...right?
We’re going to focus on a couple of things here: the symbolism, the use of Don Quixote,
and last but not least, the oh-so-confusing ending. So let’s start with the symbolism:
As director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia has stated, the film is not a social critique, but a social
self-critique. In other words, it doesn’t just take shots at those in power, but regular
ol’ folks like us, the viewer. Goreng, the idealist, and Trimagasi, the cynic represent
two sides of our consciousness. Like Trimagasi, we are self-concerned realists:
- (Michael) But like Goreng, we like to pretend we’re above such selfishness. This seems
to relate to the basic idea that, in a hyper-competitive society, we all run the risk of acting like
cannibalistic monsters.
As Gaztelu-Urrutia argues:
“Perhaps there are individuals who would give up their position voluntarily to achieve
a more egalitarian society. However, for the group that should give in, that’s very difficult
to collectively agree on. We are all selfish, but there are some among us who are very selfish.
The latter, the most selfish, light the fuse and the fire of selfishness spreads easily
among the others.”
Now, we could sit here and decode little details. For example, the woman who sent Goreng to
the prison has no idea what the prison is like - an allegory for how those who manage
society have no idea about the basic conditions they’re condemning others to face. Or how
the delicate, artful presentation of the food is meant to represent our obsession with all
the luxury capitalism produces, while what’s left for for the vast majority of the world’s
population is abject poverty. But we’re not the first to even mention this- so let’s
move on to the good sh*t: books, and specifically Goreng’s new favorite book: Don Quixote.
With the help of, arguably, the world’s first modern novel, we can better understand
this symbolism, and a whole lot more.
Goreng, like all prisoners in the film, gets to bring one item. But rather than bringing
a gun or a crate of vitamins like a smart person - he brings: Miguel de Cervantes’s
The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha. Now, most people recall Don Quixote
as the story of a delusional man who gets into fights with windmills thinking they’re
giants, and while that is important, some of the basic, overarching themes of the novel
can actually help us understand what the film is trying to say.
Alonso Quixano, alias Don Quixote, is an elderly Spanish nobleman who reads so many books that
his brain begins to rot. Specifically, he reads tales of chivalry, becomes obsessed
with a nobler, lost past, and ventures out on a delusional journey as a knight-errant.
He sets out to rescue a rando peasant who he deems a damsel in distress and randomly
names her Dulcinea cause why not? He also fights windmills thinking they’re giants
and declares his squire Sancho Panza governor of some island.
Now one clear parallel to these delusional journeys is Miharu, a woman who, once a month,
kills her cellmate and goes on a quest. Miharu isn’t in search of chivalry, but a child
who we’re told doesn’t actually exist. Except that child is real, allegedly, but
I digress.
In the film, it’s unclear what the hell is going on in society that leads Goreng to
voluntarily send himself to prison to earn a degree. But, that’s exactly what happens,
and he hopes to quit smoking and to read Don Quixote along the way. We don’t know a whole
lot about Goreng’s literary habits otherwise, but he starts off his journey, like Don Quixote,
as an idealist. But rather than chasing delusional visions of fighting monsters and saving damsels
in distress, he’s motivated by the delusion that basic human goodness and decency can
prevail in a trash castle like The Hole.
But as the film progresses, he’s slowly stripped of these illusions. After trying
to get others to cooperate by eating reasonable portions:
- (Michael) He is promptly accused of being a communist
- (Michael) And watches his cellmate piss on the prisoners below them. Like Don Quixote,
Goreng also loses his mind in a more literal sense vis-a-vis trippy hallucinations. But
instead of ideas of chivalry, he’s haunted by reminders of the horrible things he’s
done and witnessed in the prison.
After co-murdering and eating his first cellmate, Goreng scores a spot on a higher level of
the prison. Here, he returns to his former ideas of nobleness and human decency. This
time, though, he does so with the awareness that “spontaneous solidarity,” as his
new cellmate describes, is a sham.
- (Michael) The only way to make his fellow prisoners more generous to those below them
is to literally threaten them with shit.
- (Michael) After going back down, eating another roommate but this time with no murder,
and once again landing a spot on a higher floor, Goreng enters a second kind of Quixotic
journey. He meets his own Sancho Panza, Baharat, and they decide to go on a quest to the bottom
of the prison. Their mission is first, to feed everyone, but then they get another idea
in their head: to deliver a message to the administration: we’re not the animals you
think we are. By violently enforcing portion control and preserving a single panna cotta
dish, they will prove the nobility of their spirit to the people in charge of the prison.
- (Michael) Of course, this sense of nobility, much like Don Quixote’s, is quickly undercut
as a montage of skull-bashing ensues.
So - pretty deep, but that gets us to the end, which is kind of a giant WTF.
But a brief note on Don Quixote will help us understand this puzzling finale, which
kicks off when Goreng and Baharat find Miharu’s wasn’t-supposed-to-exist child at the bottom
of the prison. After some hesitancy, they decide to feed her their prized dessert which
is to say, all their skull-bashing was maybe for nothing? Goren and Baharat’s obsessive
mantra that the panna cotta is the message changes:
- (Michael) Goren wakes up from a dream realizing the girl is the message, and he descends with
her to the dark depths of the prison. The ghost of Trimagasi paraphrases a Don Quixote
passage, in which the goofy knight remarks to Sancho about how intertwined their fates are.
- (Michael) Goreng sends her back up to the top on the platform while walking into the
shadows with Trimagasi. He is presumably very much dead but on the bright side, he HAS quit
smoking?
Here’s what matters: In Don Quixote, the protagonist eventually gives up his delusions,
renouncing chivalry and dying in a fevered-state. One way to read the finale is this: Goreng
has also given up his delusions of nobility, or more specifically, that he can prove his
humanity to the administration by sending them back their treasured panna cotta. Instead,
he opts for another message: it’s you who are the real monsters, and here’s the proof,
a child whom those in charge claimed would never be confined in their hellhole.
The takeaway of the film seems to be this: oftentimes oppressed folks try to prove their
own humanity to their oppressors. However, perhaps their strategy should actually be
to prove the inhumanity of their oppressors. And it’s uh, a nice thought? Thought-provoking,
definitely.
So is the film deep or dumb? On the literary symbolism - it’s pretty deep. The filmmaker
uses the themes of Don Quixote in a novel and thoughtful way. But, and I’m sorry,
I can’t stop from thinking that lots about this movie is kind of dumb- with apologies
to the director.
Chatting with the Wisecrack crew, there was the general sense that this movie was too
“on-the-nose,” which is to say, a little bit too precisely resembling something I could
probably read on Twitter. For most of the film, the message is: if we could all stop
being greedy, there’d be enough food for everyone. It’s not that I disagree with
the message, but it’s hardly a revelation. If I can give a more theoretical framework:
on-the-noseness is to social commentary what fan service is to franchise movies: moments,
characters and dialogue that are meant to have us nod along and say “ah, yes, this
speaks to me.” In Star Wars, it’s seeing a recycled Han Solo line spark a sense of
nostalgia without any of the narrative weight of the original. More broadly in media, it’s
when old ideas are recycled to spark a sense of agreement without any of the provocation
that idea once originally had. I’m sure the first person who said “sharing is caring”
was really smart, but your kindergarten teacher is no Dostoyevsky for saying so. It’s not
that this makes those ideas inherently good or bad, but good art furthers the conversation,
instead of putting it on a loop.
Consider a film like Snowpiercer, which also takes a horrible, stratified society as a
given. But rather than the lower classes overthrowing their cruel overlords and cheering, Bong Joon
Ho makes us ask really hard questions like: does the system secretly want revolt? Is society
designed to make suffering inevitable?
It also shows us the logic of those in power: Tilda Swinton’s character is certifiably
bonkers, but seems to be a real believer with her own fears. And the conductor that keeps
the nightmare chugging along has his own, very logical reasons for being a monster:
he truly thinks it’s the only way for humanity to survive.
And, to The Platform’s credit, I do think the ending kind of gets to this. But if the
message really is “show the people in power what monsters they are,” it’s hard to
do since they barely have any screent ime. Does it work? Are they swayed? It’s obviously
meant to be ambiguous - and revealing the answer would have been tonally weird given
their prior absence. But as far as the basic idea - if 2020 has taught me anything, it’s
that oftentimes reality doesn’t dictate political discourse.
So, my final assessment. There are certainly some smarts to this movie, but it’s no masterpiece.
But it tried, and for that, the cast, crew and director deserve all the panna cottas
their hearts desire. And I’m legitimately excited to see what Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia
plans on doing next.
What do you think? Are we just too crotchety that not everybody is Bong Joon Ho or Nicolas
Cage at this point? Let us know what you think in the comments. A huge thanks to our amazing
patrons for supporting the channel. Hit that subscribe button like it’s an unruly, cannibalistic
cell mate and as always, thanks for watching. Later.