Spanish director Gaztelu-Urrutia’s film The Platform embodies just why gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins. I thoroughly enjoyed The Platform when it was released on Netflix back in 2020. It’s the kind of film that eats at you for a long time. So, when I heard Gaztelu-Urrutia was making The Platform 2, I was both optimistic and cautious, as sequels can be tricky things that don’t always live up to the original’s magic.
In The Platform 2, we return to the Pit, a vertical tower that feeds inmates once a day via a descending platform. The eponymous platform is packed with a banquet of dishes chosen by the inmates. Those at the top get first dibs while those below are stuck with the leftovers; if they’re lucky. In the Pit, food is never neutral, and the politics of eating is a deadly arena to struggle over.
The Platform 2 introduces us to new characters. Perempuan is a tortured artist (is there any other kind in fiction?) looking for redemption in the Pit after her work accidentally kills a child, and then goes on to make a commercial killing for her. Perempuan’s cellmate, Zamiatin, is a giant of a man. He’s a murderous mathematician and aspiring arsonist who has serious anger management issues when denied his favourite food: pizza.
While The Platform introduced the Pit as a free-for-all where anyone could indulge however they want, in the sequel, the inmates have formed the Law. This pseudo-religion dictates that each person can only eat the dish they ordered and nothing else. This way, everyone gets something. Freedom is not about taking as you please but about respecting others’ rights. On the surface, the Law seems to have made the Pit a more orderly and equitable world.
Unfortunately, like in any society, not everyone plays by the rules, not even for the common good. But the dissidents aren’t all wrong. No law is perfect, and the Law of the Pit makes some insane demands. The worst is that food belonging to those who died is flushed away, even though it could feed the starving. Perempuan and Zamiatin come to see how no law can be just when its principals are more important than people.
If The Platform was about the dangers of individual excess to the common good, then The Platform 2 is about the threat of the common good to the individual. While class struggle and revolution were the heart and stomach of the first film, in the sequel, the battle is against the religious fervour and authority that enforces the system. In both, challenging the status quo must first come from convincing others to change themselves.
What made The Platform so compelling was that it came during the height of the pandemic. They say humanity is two missed meals from collapse, and the film’s commentary on capitalism, our consumption practices, and the distribution of resources took on a different – and wholly uncomfortable – gravity amidst news of people fighting at supermarkets over toilet paper. Trapped in our homes during lockdown, we weren’t just watching a cool thought-experiment. No, the people in the Pit were us.
What I missed from the first film was the easy intimacy and conversations between Goreng and his cellmates. While Perempuan and Zamiatin have their heart-to-hearts, they don’t feel as fully fleshed. In The Platform, the food was such a visible spectacle that it was practically another main character. Here, it’s merely set dressing. The sequel overcompensates with explosions of violence that’s so painterly in composition that it’s simultaneously orgiastic and surrealist.
While it’s never easy to make a sequel that rises above the original, The Platform 2 still serves a hefty helping of philosophical and political quandaries. Gaztelu-Urrutia manages to offer new perspectives and dimensions to the Pit and people’s relationship to food. Still, the sequel feels like its bitten off more than it can chew and the overall story comes across as slightly undigested. The film is ambitious but thematically scattered, making you wonder if Gaztelu-Urrutia himself really knows what’s going on.
If the panna cotta was the message in the first film, I’m not quite clear what the message is for the sequel. Except that riding the platform this time wasn’t quite as thrilling as it was confusing. While returning to the Pit was like comfort food, it proves that no matter how delicious a meal was, second helpings don’t satisfy as much. That said, I now know what food I’d ask for on the platform.
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