Photo: Nicola Dassas/Netflix
Food for thought is a precious commodity in the idea-hungry content dump, which is probably one of the reasons why Galder Gaztelo Urrutia’s dystopian allegory “The Platform” took off a few years ago. Departing from its simple, hard-hitting sci-fi conceit, the Spanish film takes place entirely inside a futuristic prison — a tower of scantily clad two-person cells dubbed the Vertical Self-Administration Centre, but colloquially referred to as the Vertical Self-Administration Center. Hole by its unlucky occupants. All inmates subsist on the same meal, laid out on a single table that reaches a descending platform once a day, stopping at each floor for a few minutes. What starts as a decadent feast upstairs gets nibbled away on the way, until those in the building’s lower depths scour the scraps and lick up empty plates. The message is blunt but effective: We’re all fighting for the same leftovers, says The Platform — a critique of capitalism that had a little extra impact during the days of the first pandemic summer, when the film broke some streaming records on Netflix.
But at what point does a brilliant premise start to feel a little flimsy? There’s certainly a residual quality to The Platform 2, as the original game’s creative team descend once again into The Pit to follow a new group of characters stuck in what might be called their own Hunger Games. The sequel isn’t exactly thirsty for new ideas, conceptual or thematic; On the one hand, the rules governing his hellish surroundings have been modified – a symbolic pillar of class warfare, like Snowpiercer turned on its side. But there’s also no mistaking that this plate of reheated morsels is the complete meal it was originally served.
The platform closed on a note of hope, with the literal and symbolic rise of a child from the malnourished bowels of the pit. “Platform 2” appears to begin in the wake of that revolutionary gesture, even with the reintroduction of a familiar face at the end calling into question the chronology of events. This time, each person in the hole gets to choose his or her daily set meal, and it is up to each prisoner to eat only what has been rationed. There is not enough food yet, but it is a more equitable arrangement, and a system of self-censorship has arisen to support it, with so-called loyalists taking it upon themselves to “pacify” the so-called barbarians who consume more than they need. A serving of daily bread (or pizza, cake, or prunes). Cannibalism is now outlawed as well, which is a real blow to those below level 100 or so, as deteriorating bodies are a more dependable source of daily nourishment than anything left on the table at that point.
Gazello Urrutia, who co-wrote and directed “Platform 2,” seems to face the difficulty this time of realizing political ideals, no matter how pure they may be. One of the new rules of the pit is that if someone dies, no one is allowed to eat their share, even if they are starving, because that would be unfair to everyone else. But is wasting food in the name of equality a fair system? If the first film took aim at how capitalism pits the 99% against itself, the second seems more focused on the ways in which socialist principles can be twisted in implementation. The villain here is not the faceless authority running the prison, but the blind despot (Oscar Genada) who upholds The Pit’s new laws with horrific and disproportionate violence. How many popular revolutions have found their old order replaced by a new fascism?
There’s a lot to chew on in The Platform 2, at least for a while. But this time the film’s allegorical concerns are not coupled with particularly involving drama. Instead of the original’s portrait of political awakening, Part Two follows an artist (Melina Smit) who inserts herself into the pit as a form of personal atonement. The heroine’s eventual descent into the lower rungs of this hell, where hunger drives madness, is little more than a therapeutic crucible—a generic odyssey of self-indulgence. It’s a shadow of the more straightforward arc of The Platform, which moved toward a similar destination but had bigger fish to fry than the undigested guilt of one person.
In typical sequel fashion, The Platform 2 offers more of the same, with an eye toward more. The gory violence, which sends digital heads and limbs flying in slow motion, is even gorier. The combat – an extended battle between loyalists and barbarians – is much more brutal and protracted. But more can be less. And while Gaztelu-Urrutia takes its cozy premise in the same downward direction it has taken before, those who gratefully devoured the latest entry in the franchise may decide they’ve had enough. Even food for thought can lose its flavor when placed in the microwave.
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