"The people above won't take care of you."
"Why?"
"Because they are upper class, obviously."
"Hey! Can the people below hear it?"
"Don't yell at them."
"Why?"
"Because they are the lower class."
Counting down the "dystopian" type of films in film history, most of them focus on depicting the end times and postmodern society, emphasizing the people's unyielding spirit of resistance under resource shortages or other given circumstances.
However, this small-budget movie does the opposite. It doesn't have too many backgrounds and character settings, and it doesn't pile up big scenes like other sci-fi movies. It just depicts the male protagonist after coming to a "vertical prison". story that happened.
In this prison, there is a table full of gluttonous feasts every day, from the top floor to the next floor to deliver meals, each floor stays for a certain time for the prisoners on the floor to take. The food is provided according to the number of prisoners, but because the upper class does not care about the feelings of the lower class, they continue to overeat and waste. As a result, the lower class people, the more they have to fight each other for a little bit of poor leftovers.
At first glance, doesn't it look like a vertical version of Snowpiercer? But in fact, there are many differences in its core.
In "Snowpiercer", human life is gradually disappearing due to the arrival of a new ice age, and all survivors, including the dictator who created the train, live on this train. The train is not only a dictatorial and oppressive small society, but also Noah's Ark of the human world. In "The Hunger Platform", this vertical prison is purely a place built for social experiments, while the real administrators stay out of it and watch it.
The so-called managers refer to the prison as a "vertical self-management center", thinking that after a random rotation of floors once a month, people will understand the importance of food distribution and form a mechanism of spontaneous management and mutual restraint; in fact, when When the hungry lower-level people are lucky enough to switch to the upper level, they will only seize the opportunity this month to eat and drink desperately. After all, who knows which level they will be sent to next month, and whether they can survive?
This raises two questions:
First of all, when the lower class has the opportunity to turn over and become the upper class, will they really treat their former selves kindly? No, because they are afraid of the class slipping and falling into the same situation one day, they will only seize this opportunity to ruthlessly squeeze the lower class. After all, resources are limited, if you don't strive for some resources, how can you show your superiority? Secondly, are the upper-class people in prison the real upper-class people? Floor rotation is limited to one month, and it may be reduced to the ground floor when it is reassigned next month. Who made the fucking rules? Are the people who make the rules really involved?
Did you smell a familiar smell? In real life, how many senior wage earners think that they have the right to speak in the society when they go in and out of various high-end places. When these people become vested interests, they will not take into account the feelings of the toiling public and desperately oppress the grassroots. But in the end, they are still working for others, capitalists and government officials who really master the rules of the game wave their hands, and wake up the next day, their jobs are not guaranteed.
Another difference from Snowpiercer, or most dystopian movies, is that Platform Hunger arguably doesn't have a viable resistance mechanism at all. On the train, despite the difficulties, all the carriages are still connected together, and the rebels can find a way to rush to the front of the train one by one; but in a vertical prison without even a ladder, what should the lower class do? Climb up on your own strength? Use a rope? The black uncle in the movie tried it, only to be humiliated by the upper class.
Later in the movie, the male protagonist and the black uncle came up with a solution: they sat on the food delivery platform and distributed sufficient food to each floor below the prison, which proved that the mechanism of the prison was broken and the masses were saved.
I have seen some film critics say that this is "going to the masses", but the policy of the Turkish Communist Party at the time was to "beat the local tyrants and divide the land", to unite all forces that could be united against the Kuomintang's white terror policy. In the movie, the idea that the male protagonist came up with sounds very feasible, but how many innocent inmates did they kill in order to keep the food in the process of going down? It doesn't matter whether the last little girl was imagined by them or was real "Go out of the mechanism of civilization and release a group of survivors?
Remember the scene at the beginning of the movie where the head chef lectures in the kitchen with a plate of puff pastry with a hair on it? If this plate of milk jelly was the "information" that the wise men thought of before and sent it to the platform desperately, how would the managers outside the prison deal with it? The people inside imagined that this was a life-saving message to the outside world, but the people outside thought this prison was a peaceful utopia where everyone could have a full meal. "This kind of meaning, I thought it was a chef's work error.
Having said that, the irony of the film is self-evident. Despite its blood and desperation, "The Hunger Platform" is still an excellent sci-fi movie. Or, I'd rather see it as a thriller that explores social mechanisms and human nature.
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