Class hierarchy is the critical focus of Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s dystopic horror The Platform, but it should not obscure the film’s intrinsic exploration of interlocking existential and ethical instability. The brutal boost in social injustice in our own pandemic prison has given all the more relevance to The Platform’s sardonic scrutiny of human susceptibility to rationalized ruthlessness.

The current consolidation of class limits is accurately mirrored by the hermetically closed setting. Regulated by an obscure administration, the so-called Vertical Self-Management Center is an architectural allegory for economic inequality. Each of its stacked cells contains two inmates anticipating a specific gain from their voluntary detention. The Center’s purpose is said to be eliciting “spontaneous solidarity.“ Even though the narrative marks this piece of information as unreliable, solidarity — a concept commonly perceived as a socio-psychological remedy for precariousness — remains a focal point. Due to the recent renaissance of solidarity rhetoric, the plot’s implementation of this concept provides a poignant link to the present and might help us to reflect upon the nature of solidarity as well as the public discourse in which it is used. In a reality profoundly different from the pre-pandemic times of the film’s release, one that hinges social access on medical certificates and their local validation, the scene in which the protagonist Goreng (Iván Massagué) asks for a diploma in exchange for his detention seems much more momentous. A Quixotic hero in more than one sense, Goreng gets into a cell to gain “a degree” of freedom, just to become painfully aware that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Read more