Summary : Netflix’s The Platform is a grotesque depiction of an untamed act of altruism in its utter reality but this movie makes its message clear by making “the message” irrelevant to the unexpected audience, for it is the will that matters not its end or the telos of what one can achieve. — Akira/Sam

( Spoilers Ahead! But I don’t think there is much for anyone to be spoiled anyway )

Analysis : This movie is undoubtedly filled itself with communistic and messianic figments but it also shows the natural state of an untamed human mind or the state. It is not idealistic, it is not demanding an alternative. As someone said, it is a mirror that has been held to our face. A mirror, according to me, that shows us of what we are and what we will be in the vertical pit if we are to be victims of it, where the hierarchies are self-imposed and cultivated. Everyone in the pit are victims of same fate, there is no higher or lower to what they can achieve but to be a plaything of the randomness. Their suicides prove that their so-called hierarchies won’t make them complacent.

” … he who’s down one day can be up the next, unless he really wants to stay in bed, that is…”

The levels in which they are transferred are the levels of mere chance. Bonded to the same spirit what they are left to achieve on their own part was solidarity. The rational understanding of the tragedy of commons, as long as they exploit this concept they let the others suffer. This is something we can observe in today’s world but it is something that has been hidden by the heavenly moral guide of religious leaders or the idealist’s passion to be God-like.

“The truth may be stretched thin, but it never breaks, and it always surfaces above lies, as oil floats on water.”

Truth of what we can mould ourselves into anything is right on the surface, just like the oil that floats on water. But we shroud ourselves with matters that pose serious threat to the nature we share. We simply assume the better of what we cannot be, we throw ourselves at the limited resources and savor them with utmost lust. The moral of this story is the reflection of our inner desire that we pick up something like a flower from the garden and to see it wither away right before our very eyes, it dies to please our senseless passions.

To deplete a shared resource in the name of self-interest is common but to consume the resources to fit the bare necessities is uncommon. Though how uncomfortable this uncommon thing is, we have to put every mode of our mental faculty to achieve that. Act in the name of self-interest but this selfish nature is about protecting our nature for you’re a part of it. It is merely an extension of our physical self. Another person by this sense is an extension of what you can be, this alone creates altruism. A sense of rationalization which is not innate (as many of you may want to believe) but simply a nurtured mental property to protect your kin or state. That is why the meaning of why that unnamed Asian girl must be saved is irrelevant to the audience. She is not the telos (τέλος : end or purpose) that you are supposed to look for, but the main characters’ pure act of sacrifice to send the message. Whatever the means it took the protagonist to send her is that what should matter. The will to let yourself be a fool in the chaos.

“One man is no more than another, if he do no more than what another does.”

If we start to think about this trust as a public commodity or property, we might find ourselves benefitted from the higher levels of trust in terms of communicating with others with simplifying contracts and many other possible social activities. This movie exactly does that, by changing its course of action from violence to solidarity so that they get more out of the exchanges with others while spending less time making sure that they don’t have to degrade to violence.

Most people in the movie miss or ignore the fact that trust is an important public resource and that losing it can have long-term negative consequences for everyone involved in this vertical battle for food. It doesn’t take much to violate trust, with every level in the movie bad prisoners take advantage of the violation and becomes barbaric; even sinking to a such level of defecating on a black person’s face or urinating on the food that goes to lower levels. Or attempting to rape the mother of Asian child.

“The fault lies not with the mob, who demands nonsense, but with those who do not know how to produce anything else.”

Conclusion : Messiah is someone who only delivers the message and that is simply his purpose and nothing more. What happens thereafter, be it happily or unhappily ever after, is of no importance to us.

Filmmaker showed us what we are through their message and that is important to us. Perhaps we should take the mantle of what it is to be a messiah and convey whatever we can to create a better state.

We can also see the typical behaviors of Panic Buying in the movie, an normal side-effect of anthropogenic mistrust in the authority or his fellow citizen amdist a plague or crisis. Are we learning something from this movie? Yes, but in an inhuman way.

And I end this scribbling with an optimistic quote : “for hope is always born at the same time as love…”

Netflix : The Platform (Spanish: El Hoyo) is a Spanish satirical science fiction film, directed by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia and released i n 2019

[All the quotes mentioned here are from Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes.]

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