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Rating: The Hole.
Curious that I find myself reviewing for the second time a film with the same title as an old French movie:
https://www.debaser.it/jacques-becker/il-buco-le-trou/recensione
…and once again, it is a prison, but this time it is not a conventional prison and it is impossible to escape…
There are those who are above.
There are those who are below.
There are those who fall.
A bit like in life.
Imagine people imprisoned in a room. Two per room. In the center of the room, a square 4x4 hole. First floor.
Second floor, the same.
Third floor: the same.
…and so on, downwards, further and further down.
An infernal tower, with no windows, two beds against two walls, a sink, and in the middle …a hole.
Every day, a 4x4 platform lowers to cover the hole. A table set with every delicacy, even haute cuisine…
The first floor obviously eats first. The second eats the leftovers of the first floor. The third floor the same.
…and so on, downwards, further and further down.
What and how much will be left for the lower floors to eat?
The goal is to endure for a few months to obtain a certificate whose usefulness is unknown to us, but we suppose it's very, very useful once back in freedom, out there.
This is the interesting beginning of the Spanish "political & dystopian" fantasy-horror written by David Desola and Pedro Rivero and directed by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia.
It won several awards at the Sitges Festival and conquered the audience (and myself) at the Toronto Festival 2019.
We then meet the protagonist who finds himself on the 48th floor. It's Goreng (Iván Massagué). His cellmate is Trimigasi (Zorion Eguileor).
Okay, I'll stop here.
Can you imagine what might happen as days go by? If you add to this a little rule from those who manage the hole that I won’t tell you, you will understand that our tenants (but how many floors are there?) find themselves in quite a hell of a mess.
Yet the food is calculated to feed everyone from the top to the bottom floor, down in the depths of the tower… an exemplary life metaphor where those above are well-off, have everything, even too much. Those below have little, the leftovers, when things go well, until there's nothing left and from nothing, one dies.
The film is raw and cruel, the setting necessarily sparse and filthy. We will see in extreme and desperate conditions what a human being is willing to do just to survive. The photography is icy and “red.” Red like the blood that will inevitably flow. Even the soundtrack, reduced to a minimum, is cold and unsettling.
Our hero will try to change things but will soon find himself also a victim of an unfair and selfish system that produces social injustice, death, and violence.
It's a film that makes you reflect, with all too clear references to our society and the world we live in.
And what floor are you on?
By Netflix
@Carlos: watch it, it made me think a lot about what we talked about here.
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