The Platform is a mind-bender of a film that may or may not have had a deeper meaning under all the cannibalism and hallucinations. Even before I watched it, I had a feeling that it was going to be kind of weird. While scrolling through YouTube, I had seen multiple videos explaining the ending of the film or revealing its “secrets.” That’s always an indicator that the film in question is going to be a doozy. Now, I’m not going to disregard all of those videos and say that it was simply a strange movie without much else to it — but to be honest, I’m still not exactly sure that’s not true.
From the start, the premise of The Platform is kind of out-there. The movie revolves around a prison where cellmates are placed two to a floor. A huge tray of food moves down every day and visits each platform for a few minutes each. The pair has to eat as much as they can before it moves to the next people. The ones who are on the top floors get to each as much as they want while the bottom floors get barely anything to eat at all (usually, they just end up eating each other). Additionally, the floors get shuffled at the end of every month so even if you get a good floor one month, the next you could be eating practically nothing for weeks. Even stranger, the reason that the main character, Goreng, is in the Platform to begin is because he’s in an agreement to spend six months there in exchange for a degree. If you think about the concept too long, it starts to make increasingly less sense, but it is what it is.
Once the main idea of the film has been established, it follows a pretty simple storyline: Goreng and his cellmate try to take down the Platform. But this is where things get really complicated. Their great plan is to try to force people to only eat a small portion of food so they leave some for the people on lower floors. When that doesn’t work, they come to the realization that they need to save a tray of food to force the people who run the Platform to realize that they’re not losing their humanity — because that would somehow break the system and they would win? I’m trying to explain it as well as I can, but to be honest, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to begin with.
Okay, but here’s the part that I think I can find a deeper meaning in. When I was in AP Literature in high school, I read a short story called The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas. The story describes a perfect town that holds a secret. The only reason that the town is so perfect is because buried deep within the city is an innocent child suffering. They have no idea why they’re in pain and unable to be freed, but their suffering is necessary for the town to stay peaceful. Basically, the child is unknowingly trading its pain for the contentment of a whole town. When the people in the town turn 18, they’re shown the child and explained its purpose. Some choose to stay and try their best to ignore the truth hidden beneath the town, but others can’t live with themselves and simply leave the town, thus the name of the story. This connection to The Platform might not be obvious at first, but I swear it’s there.
In the film, after Goreng goes to the lowest level of the Platform, he finds a child. An innocent child, trapped in the Platform without reason. He shouldn’t even be in there in the first place because supposedly only people above the age of 18 are allowed to be held there. The movie ends when Goreng sends the child on the platform with the last uneaten tray of food to the surface as a “message” to the people who run the entire operation. In Omelas, the child is a symbol of purity and innocence suffering for the betterment of others. In The Platform, the child could be a symbol of the hidden suffering of others. I don’t know if the people who wrote The Platform where familiar with Omelas, but I’d like to think they were.
Overall, The Platform wasn’t a bad film. It was weird and didn’t make sense all the time, but it at least tried to do something different. I can respect that from a horror film. Moral of the story: don’t watch The Platform if you have a weak stomach, and don’t walk away from Omelas.
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