El hoyo
Country of Origin: Spain
Primary Audio Language: Spanish
Director: Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia
Film Length: 1h 34m
Synopsis: A vertical prison with one cell per level. Two people per cell. One only food platform and two minutes per day to feed from up to down. An endless nightmare trapped in The Hole.
Star Rating: ★★★★★
Review: Winner of the 2019 Midnight Madness TIFF Award for best underground and cult films, this film is set in a near-future dystopia prison and is a brutally haunting social allegory of capitalism and class stratification that will stick with you for days, HIGHLY RECOMMEND.
I actually watched this film about a week ago and decided to postpone writing a review, choosing to cover ‘Angel of Mine’ and ‘Monos’ instead. Both of which were good, but nowhere near as heavy or powerful as this one.
Goreng, the main character portrayed by an amazingly talented Ivan Massagué, volunteers to enter “The Hole” for 6 months in exchange for a University degree. “The Hole” being a multiple-level underground prison comprised of a, at first unspecified, number of stacked concrete cells each housing two inmates, formally referred to as a “vertical self-management centre” by the administration.
When Goreng is approved to enter the system, he first wakes up on level 18 of The Hole. His cellmate is an elderly man, named Trimagasi, who explains the main rules of the facility: each day a platform of lavishly prepared food will descend from above through the large gap in the center of the floor, stopping at each level for two minutes before continuing to descend down to the lower levels. This means that those at the top can engorge themselves until they are full, but those below are left with the scraps, with those at the level receiving nothing.
At first Goreng is disgusted and resistant to eat the trampled left-over food, but eventually succumbs to his hunger. At the beginning of the next month, when all of the inmates are randomly assigned to new levels, he and Trimagasi wake up on level 171, where no food will reach.
The rest of the film follows his survival, his loss of humanity, and his attempt at redemption as he, first, tries to reform the other prisoners, and then to break the system all together.
Its criticism of capitalism and the greed of the privileged is similar to that in ‘Parasite,’ but it goes beyond just blaming the rich by its visceral depiction of our individual responsibilities as members of the system, and how we all have blood on our hands.
In an interview with The Guardian, director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia explains his film, “the point of The Platform is that it isn’t about a war between those above and those below – we all have someone above us and someone below us.” It’s something to demand action from politicians and billionaires, essentially located at the highest levels of The Hole, but their lack of action in compassion for those of us below them, does not absolve us of individual responsibility. “You can look above you and think that the people up there should be doing much more, but then you look down and see there are many levels below yours,” he said. “The question is: what am I going to do from where I am to fight this selfish structure that runs throughout our society and species?”
What you do with the message after watching the film is up to you.
Available On: Netflix
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