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El hoyo 2
DIRECTED BY: Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia
FEATURING: Milena Smit, Hovik Keuchkerian, Natalia Tena, Óscar Jaenada, Bastien Ughetto, Ken Appledorn
PLOT: A messiah reigns supreme over a cadre of “loyalists” in the pit, whose merciless enforcement of the law both maintains and threatens the lives of those volunteering to survive the platform.
COMMENTS: Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia might have done better just sticking to this franchise as a platform for various character studies. The kinds of people who “volunteer” for probable death by starvation are bound to be interesting: life’s losers casting the die for one last chance, be it for success, salvation, or something else. Gaztelu-Urrutia’s opening salvo in the original Platform allowed for dissection of society (rich at the top—literally, at least, food-wise—doomed at the bottom) and how individuals fit in to the whole mess. In his second outing, we meet some interesting people, and witness how zealotry in the name of the masses typically leads to a whole new flavor of injustice.
The platform’s new recruit, Perempuán, begins as a cipher, and despite staggered reveals pretty much remains so. She is the audience’s new window into this purgatorial nightmare, kept company for a time by an ogre of a fellow who may or may not be a mathematician, but is certainly a screw-up. But her pot-bellied cellmate is never a problem; indeed, he’s a sensitive soul with no aspirations to harm anyone other than himself. Harming others is left not just to the platform’s overseers in this outing, but also to a group of fanatics who have taken it upon themselves to enforce “the Law,” which was hinted at in the first film. Eat only your share. Do not eat the food of the dead—’cause it’s unfair. Disobey the Law, and you will be strictly disciplined.
With every thesis (the platform), there is antithesis (the cult of Law), morphing eventually into synthesis. Synthesis, in this case, is a rebellion against the rebellion. The prisoner’s law, as interpreted solely by an impressively mobile messiah—how he travels around the 333-level deep complex never quite clicks—raises some interesting questions: when does enforcement for the greater good become mere barbarism? Is pure equity something to pursue even when it means bringing everyone down to the same level of misery? At one point the messiah’s methods are questioned; he rejoins that they kill now so that they needn’t kill in the future. I’ve heard that before: tyranny thwarted by a rebellion, which turns into a horrible new tyranny. Gaztelu-Urrutia seems to suggest there’s a third, middle-way.
That sensibility usually gets lost in the fervor—and particularly so in the case of The Platform 2. There is much to enjoy this time around: the inmates are fleshed-out people pushed to desperate extremes; the vagaries of populist autocracy are dissected; and spiritual undertones manifest in a semi-elegant allegory. But as other viewers and critics have observed, a muddle (a frenzied, violent muddle) develops. Though the film gnaws at interesting themes, there are a few too many, and the climax feels like an under-chewed story to gulp down as the credits roll.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
