The platform, the most ambiguous and open ending
The platform (El Hoyo in Spanish) was released a few months ago on Netflix and has made history as the first Spanish movie to become the most watched on Netflix in North America. The film has left much to talk about, but what has been more commented and unexpected has been the end, a rather ambiguous ending that has caused numerous talks between friends to decipher what actually happened.
The film takes place in a kind of prison that has a lot of floors, on each floor there are 2 people, this is a positive side because, if you get along with your cellmate you won’t have any problems, but, the real problem arises when it is time to eat, because everyone must share the food. A platform is loaded on floor 0 with food, drinks and delicious desserts and then sent across all floors, which means that people on the first floors will end up with almost all the food, while those below will not be able to feed themselves, for this fact individuals on the lower floors have to resort to extreme measures to survive.
!!(SPOILERS BELOW)!!
The ending is one of the most open that has been seen in a long time, this leaves room for each viewer to have a different interpretation about the end of this film. The end is when the protagonist, Goreng (Iván Massagué), helped by Baharat (Emilio Buale), after having gone through all the levels and tried to apply a System in which everyone shared the food, they find a girl who looks surprisingly healthy on what appears to be the top floor of this strange building and they send this girl to level 0, she is the "Message".
A fairly accepted and optimistic interpretation is that only the youth of today or the new generations are able to confront this unjust and selfish system
Another interpretation is that Goreng dies when he descends to the last room and meets Trimagasi (Zorion Eguileor) he has an imaginary conversation with him, where Trimagasi tells him that his journey is over and also that the "message" does not need a carrier. Goreng gets off the platform and walks to Trimagasi, then the platform goes up with the girl and while that’s going on the film ends. It’s quite accurate since Goreng was wounded from several levels ago
There are many different interpretations, but how do you know which one is right? That’s what makes this film so successful for me. However, the same director Gaztelu-Urrutia has a different point of view and expresses it like this "For me, that lower level (333) does not exist. Goreng is dead before he arrived and that’s just his interpretation of what he felt he had to do."
In the film we can see a strong and clear criticism of capitalism, and also of socialism when Goreng and Bahara did their best to ensure that the food was distributed equally, this did not work as they were forced to kill those people who initially wanted to help.
In my opinion Goreng and Bahara if they die, Bahara’s wound was quite deep and the loss of blood combined with the poor nutrition and physical effort he had made, made it clear that he would not last long alive
What would you have done? Would you have stayed on the 6th floor with the privileges of eating luxurious and comfortably? Or would they have acted like Goreng? In my case I would have stayed on the 6th floor, obviously.