Director – Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia Munitxa, Screenplay – David Desola, Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia Munitxa, Egoitz Moreno, Pedro Rivero, Producers – Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia Munitxa, Carlos Juarez & Raquel Perea, Photography – Jon Sagroniz, Music – Aitor Extebarria, Additional Music – Aranzazu Calleja, Visual Effects Supervisors – Inaki Madariaga & Raul Campos Martin, Visual Effects – Alive (Supervisor – Inaki Gil “Ketxu”), Bestea (Supervisor – Jose Panadero “Zekar”), & D0 Postproduction & Deluxe Content Services Spain (Supervisor – Javier Urosas), Special Effects – Drama X (Supervisor – Jon Serrano), Makeup Effects – Gorka Aguirre & Agar Martinez de la Hidalga, Makeup & Prosthetics – I-Real FX, Production Design – Azegine Urigoitia. Production Company – The Platform Film/Esta Productions.
Cast
Milena Smit (Perempuan), Hovik Keuchkerian (Zamiatin), Natalia Tena (Sahabat), Óscar Jaenada (Dagin Babi), Zorion Eguileor (Trimagasi), Antonia San Juan (Imoguiri), Ivan Massague (Goreng), Bastien Ughetto (Robespierre)
Plot
Zamiatin and Perempuan are prisoners in a prison of 333 vertical levels. Every day a banquet table moves down between each floor. Each prisoner has stated the food they prefer to eat. Among the trays and plates on the table, there is one with their specified meal on it. The law of the prison is that an inmate must eat from their own platter but not touch any of the others. They can trade with others but the honour system exists. Zamiatin becomes upset when two days in a row his pizza is missing. The tension between those who follow the law (Loyalists) and those who eat whatever they want (The Barbarians) soon erupts into violent conflict.
The Platform (2019) was a film with a startling social metaphor – that of a vertical prison of three hundred levels. Each day a banquet table moved up and down the shaft in the centre. Those at the top could feast to their heart’s content, while those at the bottom starved, but regularly the levels would be swapped about. It was a sharp and vivid metaphor for the capitalist system. The original proved a modest Netflix hit and so director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia (who has now appended Munitxa to his name) is back with a sequel.
The Platform with its allegorical prison that starkly illuminated images of the haves and havenots in a hierarchy of privilege was not exactly a film that seems to be set up for a sequel. Nevertheless, that is exactly what Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia Munitxa gives us with The Platform 2. To add some novelty to the premise, the social scenario of the previous film is now inverted. Here the same banquet table laden with food travels up and down every day. However, now the prisoners have selected one meal to eat, while the prison exists on an honour system where each inmate only eats what is theirs and no more. The system is disrupted by anarchists who steal others food. We in turn see that this is a system no less harsh than the previous film with the wilful wasting of food that is not theirs to ensure equitability and brutal violence between the factions.
I didn’t find The Platform 2 as accessible or as sharp a film as its predecessor. I did like the central social allegory that drives it – the first film was a biting satire of capitalism and a hierarchical society, but this is equally attacking of socialism and a desire to see society evenly divided among all. Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia Munitxa throws us into the midst of this and takes some time letting us grasp the nature of the scenario. Even then, he starts with one viewpoint protagonist Hovik Keuchkerian and then jumps across to follow Milena Smit. Moreover, the drama takes place between multiple levels with prisoners regularly riding the table down to join or combat other factions. It is not always easy to follow what these represent and what they are fighting about.
(l to r) Hovik Keuchkerian, Bastien Ughetto and Milena Smit with banquet table
Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia Munitxa ups the brutality with entire cells full of people savagely fighting to the death. There are times the film comes with extraordinary images – a wide angle of the shaft lit in a red light with the sides in complete shadow as a body bounces between levels and splatters on the way down; of a giant human pyramid of people all reaching up. The Platform 2 also moves a little towards an explanation of the scenario, although is one that leaves as many questions as it does answers – where Milena Smit manages to stay awake (it is not exactly clear how) when everybody is gassed during the changeover and observes mysterious figures in black shuffling bodies around seemingly in zero gravity.
I was following The Platform 2 for about its first two-thirds but by the time of it last act, it felt that the film had gone off the rails into narrative incomprehensibility and confusion. There seem a bunch of elements introduced – Milena Smit’s obsession with her artwork, the introduction of the child, what exactly the revolution being stirred is all about, who exactly the mysterious figures in black moving floors around are, and the meaning of their end arrival at the bottom level. By this point, I really had no idea what was going on in the film.
Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia Munitxa subsequently went on to make Rich Flu (2024) about a virus that kills the wealthy.
