Film of the Year 2020: ‘The Platform’ (dir. Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia)

I didn’t watch a lot of new films this year. For various reasons, my TV and film consumption has been mostly restricted to nostalgia and comfort viewing. Add to this fact that the delays on the releases of films I might have gone out and seen on a whim, and there are very few new films I watched this year. 

However, back at the start of this whole mess when I still had the energy and motivation to search out new things to engage with in a new and still kind of exciting lockdown, I stumbled upon The Platform, a Spanish horror film from Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, available on Netflix, that really stuck with me. 

Our protagonist wakes up in a mysterious prison; a deep hole ringed with an unknown number of levels, with two prisoners to each level. Once a day a platform is lowered to each level in turn with all the food for that day. Each level, starting at the top, has a set amount of time to take and eat as much as they can before it moves down again. So if you’re at the top you can stuff yourself like a king, but if you are at the bottom you’re left with whatever those above you leave. 

Then, once every two weeks, every pair of prisoners wakes up on a new, randomly assigned level. If you wake up on a low enough level, you don’t know if you’ll be able to eat for the next two weeks. If you wake up at the top, why should you leave food for those lower down when no one did so for you? 

So far, so effective social commentary. What makes The Platform work, though, is that the film doesn’t try to make a statement about any particular political stance or philosophy. It doesn’t matter what the system, there will always been people at the top who will take for themselves and not think about those below them. 

Do you try and convince people to be better? To share? Do you take what you can for yourself and hope that things will get better. And, when you find yourself at the very bottom with no power to change your situation, how far exactly will you go to survive? 

Focusing on this core concept, without any flabby backstories or plot-lines, Gaztelu-Urrutia creates a wonderfully constructed, lean movie. At 94 minutes, it’s the perfect length. No grandiose attempts at making something “epic”. The prison - how it works, why people are they, how anything works - is never explained. But that’s for the best. We know enough for the story to be told. That’s all it needs. 

This is a rare thing these days. I personally feel 90 minutes is the perfect length for a movie. I don’t hate longer movies. There are always reasons for a film to be longer. But I feel anything over 90 minutes needs to be justified. The director needs to be certain that extra length is needed. Unfortunately, a lot of directors are terrible at “killing their babies”, leaving us with movies that are  half and hour or more too long. 

Check it out on Netflix when you get the chance. 

How about you guys? What movies did you see this year that stood out from the constant consumption of media that was 2020?