The film was released in 2019 and distributed by Netflix in the United States. Although the film was released online in many countries, due to the multi-angle thinking brought to the audience by the social issues presented, the film immediately became an Internet hit after its release and received a lot of attention. This is a very symbolic film. In this film, it covers almost all kinds of people from all walks of life in the form of metaphors, and also discusses some social problems that have existed from ancient times to the present - class antagonism and resource allocation. The film sets the situation in a 333-story vertical prison. This prison is controlled by a certain management. Two prisoners are held on each floor of this prison. Here, the prison is a metaphor for society, the level of the prison is a metaphor for social class, and the management class is a metaphor for God or the person with the highest power. Prisoners in prison are metaphors for different groups in society. Everyone lives on their own floor for a month. A month later, it was moved to a new floor. Here, the rotation of floors is a metaphor for the rotation of social classes. This prison is characterized by a daily supply of abundant and delicious food. The food is prepared by a team of top chefs who even create exclusive dishes for each prisoner according to their preferences. However, these foods are placed on a huge lifting table. Every day, the table starts from the zero floor and stays on each floor for a few minutes. The people living on the upper floor will eat the food first, and when the food descends layer by layer, it will become Fewer and fewer, and those living in the lowest strata will not get any food. According to the settings of the prison administrator, as long as everyone eats their own portion of food, the food on the table will be enough for all people. However, because the people who lived on the upper floors who were exposed to the food first ate and even spoiled the food, when the food reached the 48th floor, there was not much left. Therefore, people living at the bottom can only choose to kill each other and eat their roommates. Here, food is a metaphor for social resources, and hunger is a metaphor for human desire. The above two are the basic framework of this film. Let's talk about some of the main characters in the movie. The hero of the film is a man who volunteers to join the prison experiment through an interview. Each person can bring one item with them when entering the prison. And the male protagonist chooses to carry a book - "Don Quixote". The male protagonist is an ideal romantic. He wants to be a kind person. However, good people cannot survive under the law of the jungle. In the end, the male protagonist survived because he ate two roommates. This also means that people who want to go from the bottom to the top in society must walk up on the corpses of their companions. The male lead's first roommate is an old man. The old man has been in prison for more than a year. He lived on the eighth floor, and he also lived on the 122nd floor. The item the old man brought in was a knife. The old man is a refined egoist. When there is no conflict of interest, this kind of person will behave very nicely, but once there is a conflict of interest, this kind of person will do anything for their own interests. By the way, this is the kind of person I hate the most. The second roommate of the male protagonist is a prison interviewer. The interviewer believed that the prison system was perfect. After the interviewer got cancer, she decided to experience the perfect system for herself. Female interviewers are idealists among the privileged. They created a system they thought was perfect, they thought they were helping others. In reality, they are just self-motivated. The male lead's third roommate is a black man. To address the uneven distribution of food, they jointly launched force reforms. Black people represent people who come from the bottom, but want to work hard to change their fate. However, because of the oppression of the upper class, it is difficult for them to Change your destiny through your own struggle. Therefore, he can only choose to cooperate with idealists and initiate a revolution. When the male protagonist and the black people revolt to change the rules of the game, they meet a wise old man. The wise advised them to have a peaceful dialogue with the ruling class. Wise men represent people who want to change the rules of the game by negotiating with the upper echelons. I think he is like Gandhi of India. However, in the case of information asymmetry, the information that the people at the bottom have tried their best to pass on to the people at the upper level is just "a hair falling on the pudding" in the eyes of the people at the upper level. At the end of the movie, a little girl appears in the male protagonist's hallucination. The male protagonist sent the little girl to the top floor by raising and lowering the dining table. He hopes to pass on the living conditions of the bottom to the ruling class through little girls. The little girl represents hope. However, the illusion that the little girl is the male protagonist does not exist. So there is no hope. 4. Uneven distribution of resources and class antagonism are social problems that have existed since ancient times. That's what the film focuses on. In the movie, the people in the prison come up with various solutions to address the uneven distribution of food. The first is "spontaneous solidarity": the female interviewer urges people to eat only their own portion of food every day, not to overeat and not to waste food. As it turns out, this method is ineffective. Not only did people not listen to her, they even insulted her. Then there is the "mandatory assignment": the male protagonist and his roommate decide to make assignment rules and use violence to maintain them. Finally, on the advice of a wise man, the male protagonist decided to negotiate with the management in a peaceful way. They decided to send a signal to management that, in order for the people in management to understand that the people at the bottom had made changes, management should also make changes. Management should change the living conditions of those at the bottom. They chose to leave a pudding for the management. To deliver this message, they killed everyone who opposed them and lost their lives. In the end, the pudding was successfully delivered to the chef team. However, the chef team did not understand the message that the male protagonist wanted to convey. They just thought that no one ate this pudding, it must be because the pudding was not perfect. Methods of peaceful protest have also failed. Because the management team at the top has a hard time understanding people in the lower classes. The message that people in the lower classes are desperately trying to convey, in their eyes, is only "I have worked so hard to prepare delicious food for you, why don't you eat it?" And will class exchange make the allocation of resources more efficient? evenly? The answer is "no". When people are in the upper class, they will only enjoy the resources of their own class and will not take into account the feelings of people in other classes. When people in the lower classes become People in the upper class will not sympathize with people from other classes. They will think that they have suffered so much and deserve the enjoyment now. So, in the face of class antagonism, how can we resolve the growing social contradictions? Apparently, the director didn't give a solution either. This question may have no solution at all; perhaps, this is the ultimate question explored by the development of human civilization. Five This movie is very reminiscent of the same type of movie "Snowpiercer". Many people think that the film is inferior to Snowpiercer in the expressiveness of the story. This problem does exist. Although both films explore issues of social class. However, the film is too straightforward in its narrative, which makes the story lose its tension and is not expressive enough. However, I think the film is more profound in its awareness of social issues. For example, the problem of class interchange in movies. After the class swap, the social order will not be more perfect. This is a deeper understanding of social class, not just a discussion of the bottom rebelling against the top. In short, as a thriller film in a closed space, the film's presentation of good and evil of human nature, the reflection on class antagonism, and the discussion of the problem of resource allocation balance can still allow the audience to get some useful thinking while watching the film.
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