The Platform (Movie Review #1)

SPOILERS AHEAD!

In the movie “The Platform”, food symbolizes a lot. The setting includes a stone wall without strings that goes up and down between a four-hundred-story building, which is referred to as a platform. There is a lot of food on the so-called platform and it stays on each floor just for a minute, giving the residents insufficient amount of time to pick up something and eat it properly. It wouldn’t have been a problem if there had been enough food for all of the people that are living in this dungeon-like place, yet, the prisoners that are living beneath the first thirty to fifty floors are dealing with an unimaginable sense of hunger. They cannot reach the food since the ones at the top are impatient and greedy about it, making a statement about how impossible it is to feed the rich, and it also emphasizes capitalism.

The hunger is bad for the ones who are on the ground floors yet the people on the top floors also suffered at some point since their place in the building changes every week. So they found it their right to toss the food away, pee on the platform, or do crazy things like this. I think it is because they just got used to the sense of hunger and find it something that cannot be suppressed anymore.

A feeling of unsatisfied hunger. The way they grab the food without looking at it, without using utensils, just acting upon their animalistic and survival instincts, not even caring about its taste as they took big bites out of the food and swallow them as a whole, without even chewing it at the slightest. However, it is not the worst part of the movie as our main character is stuck on a low floor and cannot reach anything more than water, his roommate ties him up and tries to get a piece of flesh from his leg to feed himself, committing an act of cannibalism. I think this is also a commentary on how poverty and societal pressure affect certain societies. They try to destroy their loved ones just to survive more. “Swallowing” the blood of their loved ones or people who have an equal socio-economical situation as theirs leads them to be a puppet of for capitalist movement. The rich consume all the sources whereas the poor are forced to consume each other to survive…but at what cost?

The main character also represents Jesus, which is seen as salvation, yet, God itself cannot hear the prayers of their creations. This implies greatly the fact that praying and hoping for the best won't bring you solid solutions, just as food in this specific scenario. One must put an effort and make their voice heard to make a change, this is represented as the only feasible way to make a difference in the system.

Last but not least, I need to talk about the detail of escargots (snails), which is a signature meal in France. The interrogator at the beginning of the movie asks everyone about their favorite food and our main character chooses snails. So, they the snails are also added to the platform for him but what does that mean? It means that there is enough food for everybody and their liking. Yet, everyone in the building is consuming someone else's food. This realization leads us to another question: If everyone has picked up and eaten the food that belonged to them, would it be sufficient to prevent all the misery?

To conclude my review, It can be said that “The Platform” is a great movie that contains great criticism of societal structure and it achieves it by using food and hunger as the catalyst. The movie is based highly on survival with or without food by using gore, the sense of poverty, criticism about religious aspects and how God stopped helping the poor, and commentary about using limited sources greedily. To put it easily, the movie focuses on our filthy and miserable nature of us, none other than humans.