If history is to be followed, then it can be said that in its worst manifestation, order is not much different than chaos, no matter how antithetical these two concepts seem to be, something which director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia focuses on while taking us back to his dystopian hellscape of a vertical prison in The Platform 2. If the first installment, The Platform, was a commentary on the horrors of social hierarchy, survival, and the dreaded depths of the human nature and psyche, the sequel brings a new threat in the form of organized faith—and how it can push even the question of survival to the backseat when people are misguided enough. It is really commendable how the director has managed to use the same setting to highlight another facet of human existence, that too by developing one of the major themes from the first movie.
Spoilers Ahead
The Master And The Anointed Ones
As viewers surely remember, at an unspecified time in the future, the Pit is the vertical prison consisting of 333 floors with two cellmates sharing each floor, and daily food for the prisoners moves through a hovering platform that lowers from the first level all the way down to the bottom. As a metaphor for the evil of social hierarchy, the top levels get the most food while the bottom ones often don’t get a bite to eat, although the floor positions are regularly shuffled on a monthly basis. Theoretically, the platform contains enough food to feed the prisoners of all levels, but the exploitative, greedy tendencies of humankind never let the prisoners empathize with the others’ plight as long as their own interests are served.
As The Platform 2 begins, in a different section of the pit, a significant number of children are seen to be playing together; and a montage of prisoners is shown where they detail exactly what they want to eat throughout their sentence and get to choose a single item they can carry with them. The focus shifts to Level 24, where two new prisoners, Perempuan and Zamiatin, learn about their new reality. A burly, intimidating-looking Zamiatin is annoyed by the fact that someone has half-eaten his food, and in return he tries to someone else’s share, but apparently—the majority of the prisoners now adhere to a set of conduct—laws propagated by a certain master, which dictates not to waste food or each other’s share, to ensure equality is maintained and food reaches even at the lowest levels on a daily basis. One of the prisoners from Level 23 reveals to Zamiatin and Perempuan that the Master, or Hidalgo, is a messianic figure who used to be a prisoner long ago; even in the most desperate times in one of the low levels, he didn’t resort to barbarism; instead, he meditated for a month to ward off his hunger, and when he ended up on an even lower level, he cut his own flesh to feed and save other prisoners. The supreme act of self-sacrifice inspired a message of solidarity and equality among the prisoners, and the Anointed Ones—the people the Master had saved—shared his gospel. Zamiatin and Perempuan also witness how to maintain the solidarity. Loyalists of the Master take it upon themselves to punish the barbarians through force who waste others food. One day, to neutralize a number of barbarians, the Level 23 prisoners and Perempuan engage in a violent fight with the barbarians, and as the follower’s cellmate dies in the fight, he starts discarding her share of food from the next day, which shows how strictly the rule of maintaining equilibrium is being enforced. The follower descends down to the lower level to find an anointed one to bring one of the captured barbarians to justice and requests Zamiatin and Perempuan to adhere to the law.
Zamiatin is revealed to have ended up in prison due to attempting to kill his parents by committing arson, and he pretends to have this fearsome persona, while in reality, he is a decent person who avoids harming anyone even if his own life depends on it. Gradually, as the days go by, he and Perempuan form a strong bond of friendship, and on the last day of the month, before they are about to get shifted to another level, Zamiatin reveals that he used to be a pure mathematics teacher, until the existence of an imaginary number—the square root of minus one—bothered him so much that he quit his career. The reality of his life—being abandoned by wife and children, and parents as well—was too grim for Zamiatin to ever trust in something imaginary, that too from something as absolute as mathematics. To help her friend get over the past, Perempuan takes Zamiatin’s hand as she guides him to dance.
The Reality of the Law
Religion, or organized faith, tends to have roots in noble ideologies, benevolence, and humanity, until, with time, the fanatics start propping up and turning the tenets in their own favor. As the new month begins, Zamiatin and Perempuan find themselves at Level 180 and find out the hard way that it is easier to believe in the high ideals when you are in a better position, as food doesn’t reach their level. However, followers of the law believe that change will eventually come, but empty promises don’t fill up the tummy, and the two cellmates begin to spend their days in hunger and misery. Zamiatin gets ill from hunger, and heads start rolling from upper levels as the followers take it upon themselves to enforce the order of the law. Eventually, Perempuan and Zamiatin learn that, amidst other fugitives who are being hunted down by the followers, one former prisoner of Level 24 is among them—who is none other than Zamiatin, who had eaten the food of one of the deceased followers on one occasion. To save him, Perempuan lies to the followers about having belonged to a different level previously, but Zamiatin is already afraid, seeing the viciousness of the followers. An ailing, hopeless, distressed Zamiatin remembers how his family had sent him to the prison to inculcate discipline in him, and taking his recent act as a deviance to that, he decides to kill himself by self-immolation. Before doing so, he requests Perempuan to reach out to his family and tell his children that he remained honest in his final moments. The burning body of Zamiatin falls through the void in the center, and the fanatic followers celebrate it as a sign of their master’s benediction.
Perempuan survives the month, and she is shifted to Level 51 the next time, along with a new cellmate, who is tight-lipped about her past and initially seems like a newcomer. Perempuan is forever transformed after Zamiatin’s demise, and after learning that one of the former Level 2 inmates had wasted and gorged on food to their heart’s desire, she becomes determined to enforce the law by taking down the person. Although her true intention is to take revenge upon the kind of people who were the reason for Zamiatin’s suffering and eventual death. Finally, one day, Perempuan is accompanied by her cellmate as the duo decides to subdue one of the fugitives from the lower levels, but ignores the law in the process—and despite subduing the fugitive, Perempuan lets him go. During this, she learns from her current cellmate that she has been in the pit for the last six months, and her first cellmate, Kekasih, had introduced her to the law. She and Kekasih had ignored the law only on one occasion, as they had fed a starving boy some food from the share of a dead prisoner, and one of the most nefarious Anointed Ones, Dagin Babi, had served them with inhumane punishment for that. She had had her hand cut off, while Kekasih, who gouged out the eyes of Babi, was tied naked to the platform and fed to the cannibals of the lower levels. Perempuan’s unnamed cellmate believes that they will never be safe inside the pit with fanatics enforcing the law, and during the interval—the shifting during the month’s end—they will have their only chance to escape. Before the prisoners get shifted to different levels, they are dozed with an anesthetic gas, and the only way to escape is to stay conscious during this period.
Perempuan’s Reason to Arrive in the Pit
Eventually, Dagin Babi arrives at their level and, learning that Perempuan and her cellmate have broken the law, decides to punish them for their mistakes. Perempuan’s hand gets chopped off, while her cellmate meets the same fate as Kekasih. Perempuan reaches Level 72 next time, and this is when the movie connects with The Platform, as Trimagasi is shown to be her new cellmate, who is a newcomer in this scenario, which means The Platform 2 is a prequel to the first movie. Trimagasi learns a lot of new survival tips from a jaded, bitter Perempuan, which will later be identified as his own character traits as well. One day, sick and tired of the Loyalists’ warnings, Perempuan jumps on the platform with Trimagasi and motivates others to form a resistance against the oppressive loyalists, but her true intention is to escape from the pit—and to do so, she needs to venture to the lowest level to obtain Goya’s artwork, The Drowning Dog. According to her late cellmate, one can stay conscious during the monthly interval period if they strategically choke on the painting long enough for the anesthetic gas to disperse. Dagin Babi’s loyalists end up engaging in a bloody, brutal battle with Perempuan’s loyalists, except for Perempuan and Trimagasi.
The reason Perempuan volunteered to stay at the pit is finally revealed at the third act: as an artist, she had sculpted a vicious, brutal statue of a dog, but she refused to install safety measures around the statue. Falling upon it, the son of Perempuan’s boyfriend met his untimely end. Perempuan used her societal influence to escape imprisonment and earned a lump sum by selling the sculpture as well, but in the end, she couldn’t have forgiven herself. In a flashback sequence, Perempuan is seen requesting time to heal her wounds from Imoguiri, the former member of the pit administration—time she spent inside this hellhole for the last few months by volunteering to be a prisoner. At present, as she starts consuming Goya’s The Drowning Dog, soon the anesthetic gas is released during the interval, and it becomes a symbolic representation of Perempuan accepting her past mistakes and accepting her present reality.Â
The cleaners of the pit administration tie up Perempuan’s body with the horde of corpses, considering her to be dead, but surviving the anesthetic gas, she sneakily manages to free herself. During all this, a strange social experiment was being conducted in a separate section, and Miharu, who was supposedly a part of the pit administration during this time, is seen taking one of the selected children along with her. As the child is put in final Level, 333, Perempuan takes notice, and instead of freeing herself, prioritizes saving the kid’s life. Perempuan hits her head badly while taking the kid along with her, and the duo descend to the basement, where Goreng had arrived with a kid in The Platform as well. Perempuan sees herself surrounded by a significant number of prisoners, despair and gloom being reflected on their faces, and one of the prisoners asks her to let the kid ascend, as Perempuan has completed her journey at long last. As she is escorted by the prisoners, the kid ascends to the top, to the administration—conveying the message of hope and humanity to the administration.Â
As the credits start rolling, it is revealed that after Perempuan, several others have sent children to the administration as message of sorts, and the final one till date is revealed to be Goreng, as the final moments of The Platform directly connect with the concluding scene of The Platform 2. At the basement, Goreng is visited by Perempuan, and the duo seem to share a history as Perempuan embraces him in the final scene. However, I am not sure whether it’s the afterlife where they have reunited or whether a basement indeed exists in the pit.Â
