Debut director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s The Platform (El Hoyo) makes no apology for its anti-capitalist stance, stark visuals and social metaphors, which in today’s coronavirus era make for very sober and self-reflective viewing. It highlights people’s greed and selfishness in desperate and restrictive circumstances and ironically revolves around food. Indeed it is highly topical, with food stockpiling from stores set against messages on social media about “being kind” and thoughtful.
Much like a cross between Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover with its lavish cooking scenes at the start that have a whiff of malaise about them with their ominous carcasses on display, the decadent and destructive nature of Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise, and the slow-burn dawning of eternal entrapment within four walls like Lenny Abrahamson’s Room and Vincenzo Natali’s Cube, The Platform is instantly designed to unsettle, before the characters have fathomed their situation.
Much like a cross between Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover with its lavish cooking scenes at the start that have a whiff of malaise about them with their ominous carcasses on display, the decadent and destructive nature of Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise, and the slow-burn dawning of eternal entrapment within four walls like Lenny Abrahamson’s Room and Vincenzo Natali’s Cube, The Platform is instantly designed to unsettle, before the characters have fathomed their situation.
- 4/4/2020
- by Lisa Giles-Keddie
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
There are three types of people, according to the opening lines of The Platform: those at the top, those at the bottom, and those who fall between them. That class-structure conceit forms the backbone of this ingenious Spanish horror that won the Midnight Madness sidebar at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, a twisted fantasy that aims high with socio-political ideas but never lets that get in the way of the gruesome nastiness of its Saw-like thrills.
Save for a handful of flashback scenes, we never escape the near-future superstructure of “el hoyo”–”the pit” in Spanish–a gargantuan underground holding center, in which each floor holds two randomly assigned people. The “platform” of the English translation is an immense platter of food, lowered into the pit that stops for a few minutes level by level, so that residents munch on as much as they can to survive the day.
Save for a handful of flashback scenes, we never escape the near-future superstructure of “el hoyo”–”the pit” in Spanish–a gargantuan underground holding center, in which each floor holds two randomly assigned people. The “platform” of the English translation is an immense platter of food, lowered into the pit that stops for a few minutes level by level, so that residents munch on as much as they can to survive the day.
- 10/14/2019
- by Ed Frankl
- The Film Stage
Nameless cooks hustle in the opening montage of Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s brutalist nightmare “The Platform.” Their kitchen is a blend of the delicate and the savage. A violinist plays as blades rip through fish, and the head chef caresses a dangling ham. When finished, they’ve assembled a still-life masterpiece of lobster, papaya and cake on a concrete slab. The feast could feed hundreds, but it never does. As it descends, level by level, down a residential tower, each pair of cellmates have minutes to gobble as much as they can before the food moves on to the next floor. With no distractions except for that day’s meal, the citadel is a test of survival and humanity. Says an intake officer (Antonia San Juan), “We prefer to call it a vertical self-management center.”
He and writers David Desola and Pedro Rivera are curious about how the poor devour each other.
He and writers David Desola and Pedro Rivera are curious about how the poor devour each other.
- 9/10/2019
- by Amy Nicholson
- Variety Film + TV
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