The Platform, directed by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, written by. David Desola, Pedro Rivero. Starring Ivan Massague. Spain, 95 minutes, III. Opens March 5. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

In The Platform, a floating platform is loaded up with a precious commodity every day, and distributed to the populace as the platform moves down from Level 0 — the top — to somewhere around level 250 in an unidentified tower. The knowledge there’s no more coming until the next day creates a frenzy at the top levels to hoard as much as possible, leaving absolutely nothing for those below. It’s a demonstration of the failure of Reagan-era trickle-down economics and humanity’s inability to police itself for the greater good. Or it’s about disinterest in any such notion.

No, the commodity in question is not toilet tissue, and the location is not Hong Kong. It’s food, and the place is an experimental prison, a “vertical self-management center” referred to as The Pit that leaves its inmates to manage their precious resources on their own. Needless to say, The Pit spirals downward spectacularly into violent, mercenary dystopia that illustrates how inherent class, power and economic inequalities are elevated to murderous heights through the same mechanisms that create them.

(PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

The film starts with inmate Goreng (a stellar Ivan Massague) waking up on Level 48 of The Pit, “not a bad number,” according to his roommate, the older, wiser Trimagasi (Zorion Eguileor). Trimagasi begins explaining the rules of The Pit when the food platform arrives at their level. Trimagasi proceeds to gorge, thinking nothing of digging through the disastrous tabletop. Goreng initially scoffs at the picked-over scraps until he realizes the inmates above him will indeed let those below starve, and that things are much, much worse on Level 171. All the inmates are randomly moved each month, and at the lowest levels, the platform is practically empty. Nothing trickles down that far.

We experience The Platform through Goreng, a decent man whose optimistic worldview is slowly demolished by the months he spends in The Pit and by the rogues gallery of inmates he encounters. Every inmate is allowed to bring one item with them: Goreng brings a copy of Don Quixote, which is one of the film’s great ironies. Pleas by the few — a woman who once worked for the center, a Black man aggressively seeking a way up — to ration and manage the platform’s contents, on behalf of the many are either ignored or outright laughed at. 

(PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Spanish filmmaker Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s gray, grim allegory isn’t the most subtle of films. As one of the few truly contemporary art forms out there, science fiction at its best turns a glaring spotlight on the way we live now. And The Platform does that with aplomb, recalling Vincenzo Natali’s Cube (with less math), and tapping the best of Orwellian despair. Creatively making the most of a tiny budget, Gaztelu-Urrutia turns what was obviously a stage play — there’s essentially one set with some lighting changes — into a gory, visceral comment on socio-political movement and our (rising?) apathy for our fellow man.