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The Platform
Manage episode 377402803 series 98583
This week, we tackle a pandemic favorite. This week’s flick is a highly metaphorical film about class and capitalism that resonated with people caught quarantined in their homes in 2020, when they had nothing better to do than watch Netflix and contemplate the future of humanity. How does it hold up in 2023? Have a gander at our hot take on The Platform. Cheers to the capitalists out there!
The Platform (2019)
Episode 360, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: This week, Craig picked the movie. The movie that we’re doing is the twenty… 2020? 2019, right? It’s all good. The platform’s somewhere in the vicinity of 2019. I do remember, though, this movie was kind of in discussion along the same lines as The Tiger King.
Remember when we were all in pandemic mode, and we were all locked in our houses for the first time, and everybody kind of started watching Netflix a little bit more, and The Tiger King became kind of a big… Thing that we were all discussing I feel like it really hit a big pandemic wise because it was so weird and this movie I do remember people discussing it like though.
There’s this movie out on Netflix called The Platform You got to watch it It has a lot to say about what we’re going through right now or something like that At least it kind of seemed to resonate at the time. So I remember hearing about it. I never watched it until today, but you recommended it this week and you had seen it before right?
Craig: Yeah, I think I’ve been talking about it since I heard that it was coming out and, like, talking to you about it, like, this is something that we should keep our eyes on. This is something we should do, but as is often the case, like, I get really excited about these movies and I might throw the name out there or whatever, but then they come out and we’ve already got, you know, a bunch of stuff that we’re doing or whatever.
So I just watch them on my own. After that, I kind of forget about it. So, so when, when we decided that I was going to pick this week. You know, I was, you know, racking my brain and this, uh, came to me because I did think that it would be interesting to talk about. Yes, I’ve seen it before. Uh, I don’t know, probably a year ago.
Um, but, uh, even watching it again, I think it’s interesting. But when I was watching it, I was also thinking, I wonder what Todd’s
Todd: thinking. Like… What did you think I would be thinking? I’m curious.
Craig: Do you really? You want me to tell you? Okay. I’ll tell
Todd: you if you’re right. I’ll be honest.
Craig: I am afraid that you will think that this movie is pretentious and preachy.
Todd: No, I’ll knock that right off at the pass. I don’t think it’s pretentious and preachy. It doesn’t hide its theme very well. It’s very No, it is
Craig: bold on its face. Yeah.
Todd: If
Craig: you don’t get this allegory, you are in a coma because it is so obvious.
Todd: But that in a way kind of makes it a little less pretentious. A lot of times, like, I don’t remember, recently we were talking about pretentiousness.
The Bad Batch you were all pissy about. That was a lot. Because I felt like the Bad Batch was almost the opposite. It was being very vague about things and it was… Well, that’s not true. No, I’m totally wrong. I, but I get
Craig: what you’re saying, and I agree with you. Like, it just seemed like it was trying to be confusing for the sake
Todd: of it.
Yes. And this isn’t trying to be confusing. No. It ends up like… Ambiguous, you know, at the end, you can’t really say for sure as far as plot goes what, what exactly is happening. Why is this happening? There are a lot of little unsolved mysteries in this whole affair that you’re not going to get a resolution for at the end Uh, once again, I don’t think the movie is really that concerned with giving us an answer to those mysteries In fact, I, I read somewhere I don’t know if it’s the IMDB trivia or somewhere that the director had actually shot an alternate ending that he didn’t end up going with because he decided he liked this ending because it was a little more ambiguous and you could kind of fill in the blanks.
Did
Craig: whatever you read say what the alternate ending
Todd: was? No. How about you?
Craig: No, I, I, I couldn’t find much about, no, I know, but I would be super curious because you’re right. I mean, here we’re jumping right to the ending. Like the ending is. It’s ambiguous, but… It didn’t bother me, I think, largely because any more, um, of a definitive ending I think would have felt trite to me.
No matter what it was. No matter what it was. I just think, I think that it was better left open ended. Like, cause, cause it’s addressing, like, the thing that this movie is addressing is classism. Yeah, and
Todd: like capitalism in a way capitalism.
Craig: Yeah, I suppose but but there I’m just saying that there is no It’s not like there’s a solution like yeah, it doesn’t help just right.
You can’t just casually be like Oh, this is how we end this no Yeah
Todd: I’m getting ahead of myself. I think the movie is actually quite clever Because it does pose lots of different solutions. I mean, you can see the parallels immediately. And it keeps, kind of keeps your brain working, and then you’re excited to see which of these solutions that they’re coming up with is actually going to work.
And the answer is, well, life doesn’t really work that neatly, does it? Right? Like, all these different solutions to the problems that these characters are facing have their own challenges and difficulties. And in some ways, I felt like the movie was a little depressing. Ha ha ha. In that it almost made it seem like there is no solution.
Except that there was a certain… This is why I want somebody to interpret the ending for me. Because there was a certain level of, uh, degree of, I don’t know, positivity? In the ending?
Craig: It’s, uh, like, I feel like… Goodness… Exists. Like, it’s there. There is goodness, there is hope, but… Only at the very bottom of the pit.
We have to start, we have to start talking. We have to start
Todd: talking about the movie. Well, really quick, just before we dive into it, uh, you brought it up just because it had been too long? Or was there something that… Because I think it’s really
Craig: interesting. I think the concept is fascinating. Like, I don’t even, I think that this movie kind of defies…
Definition in terms of how you would categorize it yeah, because I think to categorize this as horror
Todd: is Broad it’s pretty broad to categorize it as sci fi is not entirely accurate To categorize it as dystopian Perhaps it kind of it’s never really clear if this world is dystopian
Craig: exactly because we don’t have any greater context Yeah, it’s very interesting okay, so the premise is it’s this Institution, like, I guess the best word for it would be prison.
Todd: Except, you can voluntarily go there. Yeah,
Craig: that’s so weird! Like, it seems like, it’s so bizarre. I think that some people are, like, sentenced to go there, but then other people can elect to go there and And get a reward. Why? In God’s name! Oh, so it’s I don’t understand that. I
Todd: don’t understand that. I think I understand it.
Because it all plays into the metaphor. Because this vertical prison ultimately, I think, is a metaphor for a capitalistic society where there isn’t an authority, you know, on top telling you what you can and can’t do or evenly distributing the wealth, like, you know, communism or whatever. This is everyone is truly left to their own devices to work out how are they going to live amongst the resources that they have.
And so, you know, because there are many different kinds of societies in the world, you can elect to, for example, come to America from a place that you didn’t agree with and get, presumably, your reward. One of the chara the main character that we follow in this movie, his name is Gorang, he is… coming here and has signed up for it because at the end of it, he’s going to get a degree, an honorary degree from some university, which would presumably help his education and stuff like that.
And, you know, again, I don’t think it’s this direct of a parallel, but for example, thematically, a person from an impoverished country might decide, hey, I’m going to go to the USA to get my education because it’s going to be easier for me. Yes, I might have to endure the difficulties of getting along in this new system and, and, and finding my way with new language and everything like that, but it’s going to be worth the struggle because at the end of it, they can supply me with this, you know, and I, where I can’t get it otherwise, or it’s too hard for me to get it otherwise.
I don’t know. Is that convincing?
Craig: Yeah. It is. It very much is. And I’m sitting here leaning back in my chair with my arms crossed like, Oh shit, Todd thought about this way more than I did.
Todd: Well I’m really hoping that you’re gonna have thought about more of it because there’s so many questions I have. But yeah, I think that’s it.
And then some of us are just born here and we’re in the system and there’s nothing we can do about it. And so I feel like that might be the difference in why you could elect. To be there and why you couldn’t even, uh, we get flashbacks to his.
Craig: Interview. Like, you have to like, interview to go to prison.
Todd: It’s crazy. But again, this is like, what an immigrant has to go through. It is not easy to come, I mean, let’s just take the US as an example. And I think I’ll just, we’ll do that. Like, you know, asterisk right now, whenever I talk about capitalism, I’m, Capitalistic Society, I’m probably talking about what I know best, which is the US.
Uh, to come to the US, you know, it’s a pain in the ass. for someone who hasn’t been born there, doesn’t have an American passport for any reason. They’ve gotta go through an interview, and they gotta put documents together and all this stuff, and they might be turned away.
Craig: That, that’s, that’s really, that’s honestly fascinating to me, because I hadn’t considered it on that level, and now I feel kind of stupid, because I, I think you’re right.
I mean, that’s what they’re trying to show, but it was just so bizarre to me, like, that he elects to go in there. Yes, he’s gonna be rewarded with A prestigious degree or something, I don’t know, whatever. But he says that the reason that he’s going in is to quit smoking and to read Don Quixote. Yeah. You don’t have to go to prison to do that, oh boy.
Well. But we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re burying the lead because the lead is that yes, this is a prison, but it, it consists of cells. That are occupied by two people each, but they are all stacked on top of each other
Todd: vertically. Yeah. .
Craig: And you have, like, in the beginning of the movie, you have no idea because wherever our characters are and, and there’s a shaft, like there’s a, a
Todd: rectangular shaft.
Yeah. Like the size of a bed or a big table through the whole thing. Yeah.
Craig: Like a huge table or like a, yeah, a big bed or something. But wherever they are. When they look up or down. It just looks infinite. So you have no idea How big this thing is. Right. Gosh, we have to explain the platform But what I was thinking in watching this is I think that whoever makes movies like this, they’re, they’re genius, but it’s not like this hasn’t been done before.
Um, have we done the movie Cube? Oh yeah. Uh, on this podcast?
Todd: Did we do that? Of course it made me think of Cube, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because
Craig: the whole movie is set… Or is filmed on a, like, 20×20 set. Yeah. Like, it’s exac the entire thing is filmed on the same set. Because every location is exactly the same.
Because they’re just these
Todd: infinite cells. Rooms connected to each other, yeah. Yep, mhm. But, because
Craig: of that… I would also expect that it might be slow or boring because there’s really not a ton of action. Right. But I was intrigued and engaged from start to finish. Mm hmm. Both times.
Todd: Yes. Were you? I was.
Yeah, I was intrigued. As the movie was going on, I was a little worried because I thought too much about Cube. Like, I think when we talked about the Cube episode, the thing that kind of maddened me about Cube was that there really, at the end of the day, is no clear explanation as to what’s going on here.
And the movie is… Again, more about the interactions between these characters and how they break down and how they fight and, and how they do or do not work together to get to a solution that is not even clear to any of them. They’re like, just as clueless as any of the people in this thing, uh, where they are in it, how high it goes, how low it goes.
All they know is that when they wake up in the morning, after um, every month that they’re there, I guess they get gassed or something. And then when they wake up in the morning, they’re in a different… Height. And it’s marked clearly on the wall, which one they’re in. Yeah, which level. He starts out on floor 48 in the movie.
Uh, but his cellmate that he’s in there has been in there for many, many months, uh, before. And, uh, he says, Oh, no, you know, sometimes you wake up really high up, like to floor 6. And one time I was down to floor 132. Without any real clear reason why. I think the thing that bothered me more about Cube was that, uh, by the end of it, still I, I didn’t feel like, uh, satisfied.
I think one person ends up, spoiler alert, if you haven’t seen Cube, I think one person ends up actually exiting the Cube. And they just sort of exit into a big white light. And then the filmmakers are like, You, it could be whatever you want. I’m like, no, f k you. I hate that. You know? I hate that, and I hated that about the Bad Batch.
You know, that to me feels pretentious. Most of the time. I think if the movie leading up to it isn’t satisfying enough, then it feels especially pretentious. This movie leading up to this semi ambi sort of ambiguous ending still felt right. It’s very ambiguous,
Craig: I would argue. But I think that, uh, the reason that it worked so well for me is because I found the characters so compelling.
Yeah. Like, all of them. And there are only a handful. There are only like four or five. Really, I mean there are other people, but characters that you actually get to know a little bit, there are only four or five. And I found them all so compelling. This is a foreign film. It’s what,
Todd: Spanish? Yeah, and so you’re not going to get many clips from the episode in here, I’m afraid guys, sorry.
Yeah, well I watched
the
Craig: dub,
Todd: you watched it in Spanish? Oh yeah, I always do. Yeah. I, I, I, I found the… You know me! Speaking of pretentious…
I actually found the dub a little annoying. I found the older guy’s voice in the dub a little annoying and I, I had to switch to… The older guy’s voice was
Craig: kind of weird, like it didn’t match his… But it didn’t bother me. I actually thought the dub was quite good. Like, I was impressed by the, uh, voice performances.
I don’t know if my Netflix is, you know, automatically set to dub. I don’t know. That’s just what came up for me, so that’s… Oh, it first
Todd: came up that way for me, too. But, uh, I switched it after about… 10 minutes. Yeah.
Craig: Fancy.
Todd: You know, I have my way.
Craig: I get it. It’s funny. We’ve been doing this podcast for so long, which boggles my mind that we’ve been doing it for like a million years.
Um, but in like really super early episodes, I was like, I usually watch it in the foreign language and read the subtitles. And now I’m like, no. I have no time for that.
Todd: When did the switch come in? I recall that distinctly as well. It has not gone unnoticed on me that lately you’ve been more like, Yeah, I
Craig: watched the dub version.
I think that I am one of those people who is delusional about getting old. Like, I’ve had the same eyeglasses for probably 10 15 years. I need a new prescription. I can’t see, but I refuse to acknowledge the fact that my eyes are going bad. So I think that probably has something to do with it. Like, eh, I can’t bother to read those subtitles.
No, I can’t see them.
I found these characters so compelling. What we haven’t explained yet is that, okay, so they’re in this vertical shaft of a prison, but the food. The way that they are fed, gourmet, beautiful, gorgeous
Todd: food. Stodgy, like French cuisine type food. Yeah,
Craig: I mean this looks like… Uh, what was that movie we just did?
The Menu. Yeah. The Menu. This, when they, like, when they’re preparing the food, it just, it looks like art. It’s
Todd: gorgeous. The first scene in the movie is in this kitchen where an old man is, like, walking around in this beautiful, old classic looking French kitchen with, like, a whole army of chefs working in various…
stations and going around and correcting things. We don’t hear his voice. It’s, it’s, it’s more or less silent, but, uh, with the music playing, but, uh, we see him doing all that stuff that we talked about in the menu and all that stuff that you see in the cooking shows where they’re, you know, they’re carefully placing little petals of leaves on the plate, arranging the snails and everything.
And then he slaps somebody because, you know, he put it a millimeter off, you know, that kind of thing.
Craig: Right. Every dish is pristine and it is pristinely presented and they load up this huge rectangular platform. It’s beautiful. Take a picture, put it in a magazine. It’s gorgeous. The platform descends through this vertically stacked prison.
And so the people on level one get the food as it was prepared. The people keep eating as it goes down. It
Todd: like stops at each floor for, I don’t know, like a few minutes.
Craig: Five minutes, maybe, or something like that. Like they give them a little time to eat and then it continues down. And this is… The like, the most obvious metaphor, right?
So it’s like, it’s, you know, it’s society that the people at the upper levels get the best and the rest of us get what’s left over, um, until at the bottom, which is entirely uncertain. We have no idea what the bottom even is, but presumably they get nothing. Um, and the interesting thing about the metaphor, what I really, I do like.
This, because I think that it’s true. I think that it’s trying to hit home the fact that we are a part of a system like this. Mm hmm. But we just choose to be complacent about it. Mm hmm. Or assholes about it. Yeah. Like, unless, unless you’re at the very bottom, you’re complacent. Or you’re just an outright dick.
And frankly, if we are to apply this to modern society, I’m the complacent one. Like, my life isn’t luxurious, but I’m fine. You’re
Todd: like level 20 or something like that. Maybe 25. Sure,
Craig: sure. It’s, I’m, I’m, I’m not uncomfortable at all. So, it’s easy for me to…
Todd: To accept less than perfect.
Craig: Right. Right. Right. But…
You know, I try to be conscientious. Like, I try to help out the struggling guy and and whatnot, but the movie also suggests that even I am so complacent about it that I’m willing to literally shit on the people below me. You know what I
Todd: mean? Well, not necessarily you, but there are some who are willing to shit.
Perhaps the ones on the upper levels. And, uh, it’s interesting. Uh, I think there’s a narration at the beginning which I, it may be Trimagasi? The older man we’re talking about who is Gorang’s cellmate who says this? I’m not sure because I don’t, I didn’t go back to check. But he says there are three kinds of people.
The ones above, the ones below, And the ones who fall. That
Craig: is line two. Of my two pages of notes. Yeah. It’s like,
Todd: I have so many notes on
this table. We Trima Goss, he’s basically, uh, going through the tutorial on how the cell works, and we mostly explained all of it. And, uh, he tells him they’re on floor 48, and, uh, he’s wondering what their food’s gonna be. They can look down, and they can look up. He looks down, uh, Gorang, and starts to say something to the people down below, and he says, don’t pester those people.
Because they’re below and don’t call up because they’re not going to answer you because they’re above
Craig: we are on the same page Like you are reading from my notes It’s it’s such it’s such social commentary Don’t Esther the ones below because they are below the ones above won’t answer like hmm. Come on But it’s not annoying like in the context of this it’s not annoying it makes sense.
I believe it
Todd: I believe it, and it doesn’t feel preachy because the dynamics of how it goes down is so interesting and compelling. And there are some surprises in there where you’re just like, Yeah, you know what, I shouldn’t have been surprised at this. You know? So anyway, he’s in there, everybody gets to bring in an object.
His object is a book, Don Quixote. And the object can be whatever they want. But this guy… The old man, he asked him how he was in there, and he goes off on this tangent talking about, um, basically like a Ginsu knife commercial that he saw on TV. Uh, and he was super impressed by it, and he wondered, you know, maybe I should be sharpening my knives more often.
Maybe I have the le You know, Craig, like, maybe you should actually get This is hilarious. Get your, uh, prescriptions a little higher. Treat yourself a little bit. And he ends up Breaking the knife in as
Craig: he’s telling this story. The conclusion for us, the viewers is that he’s a crazy person. Yes.
And like, so he, he saw the Guinsoo knife. Infomercial, and so he ordered it, and then as soon as he got it, he saw another infomercial that was for, like, the Super Ginsu, and that broke his mind, and he turned into a crazy person. He was given he was given the option of either going into a mental institution, or coming to this place.
This place has a name. Oh, my God. I have something. It’s the V. S. M. C. The vertical self management center.
Todd: Yeah, we hear that later. Yeah, self management is key, right?
Craig: Self management, right? So this guy, Tremagasi has been there for many months already, and he’s only got like, he’s only got a couple of months left.
Six years. Six years. I don’t think so. this guy,
Todd: Tremagasi has been there for many months already. Six years. Six years. He said he’d been there for six years.
Craig: Boy, I don’t know how
Todd: he managed that. Well, he has a knife. Let’s put… Yeah,
Craig: he brought… That’s this thing. His object is the super knife. Like, at one point…
The thing about this knife is that it’s self sharpening. So, at one point, he’s like, The more I use it, the sharper it gets. Like, he’s just… Like, you live… You’re Goran. And you live in this little cell with a crazy person. With a knife, and it’s like a huge butcher knife. It’s hilarious.
Todd: I got, I got instant respect for this movie because it respected my intelligence.
Because immediately, Goran calls out what we were all thinking. Because uh, Trimogasi mentions at one time he was down at level 132. Right, right. He thinks there’s probably about 150 levels. And he said, uh, I didn’t get any food. And the guy says, well, then how did you eat? And he says, well, I didn’t say I didn’t eat.
I said I didn’t get any food. And, you know, that’s when he whiffs out the cut. And so instantly, Gorang runs over, you know, he’s basically like, you killed that guy, and you ate his flesh. Stay away from me.
Craig: He’s like, no I didn’t say that! Laughter Laughter But he did. Spoiler
Todd: alert! Now that Goring knows how this works, he he yells up to the people above, like, Hey, you go we need to warn them to ration the food!
And he stops and he says, Are you a communist?
Craig: Yeah, so other important things that we need to know is that, Occasionally, bodies just fall down the shaft. And it’s unclear… You know, we’re just in this one cell. We don’t know what happened. Like, did they fall? Did somebody kill them? Did they jump? Are they committing suicide?
Um, at some point, like when he’s explaining the food and stuff, Trimogasi says that as the they’re on each level for a full month. And he says that as the month goes on, there will be fewer above. But he won’t explain why and then bodies keep coming and then, um, we learn that you, you can’t keep food like you have to eat when the thing comes and you can’t hoard food or else they will either bake you or freeze you.
Todd: Yeah, because he grabs an apple and instantly everything, you know, once the, once the tray goes down, instantly everything gets really, really, really hot. So he is, he chucks the apple down the hole and everything’s fine again. I
Craig: know, and then we’ve already talked about, like, we went out of order, so we’ve already talked about how, why he got in there.
I’m sure… That Don Quixote, Don
Todd: Quixote, There’s some parallel here, right? Right, like, you know, I didn’t bother to think it through. He’s this
Craig: idealist, you know, He wants to believe that the world is a great place, and blah blah blah. Okay, whatever. Um, I, I still, I, he put himself in there for six months so he can get a degree.
Bro, just go to school. Like, this is ridiculous. There are lights in their room, and if it’s green, everything’s good. But if the red light goes on… That means that the platform has reached the bottom and is now ascending, and in a sense, at lightning speed. I don’t know if you would call it sci fi or fantasy because there is no explanation for the mechanics of this platform.
Yeah, it just floats. Yeah. Yeah, it just floats. Like, it’s not on chains, there aren’t rails, like it just… Yeah. Who knows? So there’s a woman that Yeah, that’s it. I’m trying to get to That’s what I was trying to get to. Uh, you take it.
Todd: Take it! Alright, alright. So someone falls down the hole. By the way, I think these are just people who give up.
You know? They’re done with life. Those
Craig: are those I think some of them are murdered. By the person that you’re about
Todd: to introduce. Yeah, I think that can happen. Yeah for sure. So anyway, this time someone comes down on the table and I like this bit too I’m like I would have thought of that too Like why didn’t somebody hop on the table and see what happens, right?
And there’s this girl sitting there So young woman sitting on this table and the dude says don’t worry about her. Just eat She comes down every month and she’s looking for her little boy Everyone in the hole is free to decide what they do. So What does she do? Uh, according to Trimagasi, she comes down every month and she kills her cellmate before she comes down.
She sits on the table and they kind of eat and she’s kind of creepy and stares. And, uh, she has a little shard of glass in her hand from one of the broken pottery dishes, because these dishes obviously get broken up as they go down. And when she gets to this lower level, She gets dragged off by the people below, and of course, Goreng is like, horrified.
It’s like, leave her alone! He wants to jump down there and help her. But, uh, Trimogasi says, no, no, no, no, and holds him back. And, uh, we hear a bunch of scuffle and some screaming, and the woman walks right back onto the table, sits there, looks up, and it descends a little further, and you realize she’s killed
Craig: those guys.
Right, having killed them. Right. But I really liked that scene because, first of all, this woman is not… I mean, she’s a petite woman. Clearly, she would be vulnerable to physical attack. And that’s what I liked about the, the level just below them. The men attack her and it’s clear what their intentions are.
Right. But she kills them. She fights them off. But I don’t know. It affected me because I then thought about. We have no idea how deep this thing is. Like, she’s facing this, potentially, at every level. Yeah. So, she needs to get down there for some reason. And if she’s doing this month after month, there’s something going on.
You know,
Todd: like, come on. I don’t even know. Do you understand this woman’s role in the whole metaphor? I’m not sure I do.
Craig: I don’t really. I don’t rea because ultimately I don’t really understand the metaphor, except for the, like, you know, like, as Whitney Houston told us, I believe the children are our future, like,
I don’t know, like, a child will lead them? I don’t know. And, and, everybody else, how, well, Trimogasi just says she’s looking for her son. How does he know that? Right. Because this woman never speaks, does she ever?
Todd: No, she never speaks. So how he
Craig: knows that, and then other people outright deny it, which we should get to.
They end up, uh, moving, uh, at one night. Trimogus, he’s like, there’s the gas, we’re gonna get moved. Goring wakes up at level 171, bound to the bed. Yeah. Because at level 171, that’s lower. I think Goring had said that he had been at like 132 or something before. And that at that level… There was nothing. There was no food.
And he estimated that there were probably 150 levels. So, now the fact that they’re at 171, there’s just no hope that they’re going to get anything. So, uh, he, he ties him down and his plan is… He’s gonna fast for as long as he can, but when he can’t fast anymore, then he’s gonna start eating him alive!
Todd: He’s pretty much planning to do it, and, and the reason why he
Craig: Oh, he’s definitely gonna do it!
The only reason he’s holding out is, like, for preservation.
Todd: Yeah, he said he’s gonna purge him like a snail. I don’t know much about eating snails, but, uh, he says with sail, you’ve gotta, like, Purge them for like six to seven days before you actually cook them to get the impurities out or something
Craig: like that I don’t know about snails either, but he makes a whole big deal of it And then like part of the interview process to get into prison They ask you what your favorite meal is so that they can include it On the menu, and Goring’s favorite meal is escargot.
Yeah. And later that comes up again. If there’s any significant meaning to that, I have no idea
Todd: what it does. It’s interesting. Well, what he says to him is really quite telling. I mean, it’s, it’s, again, it’s obvious this whole metaphor, but he says, uh, Don’t blame me, the people above me made me do it. There are 350 people to blame.
Before me. Again, the haves, they’ve taken everything from us. We get nothing, so I’m forced to do this. And it’s not my fault that I’m doing this. Whether it be lying, or cheating, or stealing. Whatever you do to somebody else because you’re desperate. I blame the people who have taken from me. Up
Craig: above. And even though he’s crazy.
Even though he’s crazy. Like, I get it. It makes sense. You know, you gotta eat. If you wanna live.
Todd: Yeah. You’re doing great. Yeah, you
Craig: know. So, the whole thing here is like, so he does, like, time passes very quick, well, not for them I’m sure, but for us, time passes very quickly here, and eventually, uh, the, the guy, the cellmate is like, yeah, I waited as long as I could, but, uh, I can’t wait anymore.
And he starts carving into his leg, but at that exact moment, coincidentally, the platform writing woman comes down on the platform, and she kills Tremegasi. Yep. Then, she, I, I feel like she stays. The night, you know, all by herself and and then she leaves again.
Todd: Well, she tries to feed him a piece. She helps him Oh,
Craig: that’s right.
She does she eats she carves some of him so much I’m aghast he often eats it and she feeds some to him and he eats it And then she leaves and then it seems like he kind of tries to hold off maybe for a little bit But then he ends up Eating the maggoty disgusting flesh of this guy too. Now, Trimogasi is still in the movie because now he appears as Hallucinations, which I also really liked.
Like, I thought this was fantastic. Uh, because you can’t I, I assume that it’s just all in his head, but the way that it’s presented, like, it could be a ghost. I don’t know. Ha ha ha, right. But I really liked it. But, uh, he’s still there and talking to him, and he’s like, we’re the same now. And then Goring has a sex dream about the woman.
Mm hmm. That’s kinda hot. And then, and then he wakes up. In level 33, which is a pretty high level, and he has a new roommate, and her name is Emigiri. Oh my gosh, and she looks
Todd: like Karen Black. Yeah, she does. And she was the woman who checked him in. She
Craig: was the woman who checked him in. And, gosh, like, I really liked her character.
Like, it was so interesting. It feels like a book. Like, that’s, like, the character development feels like a book. book. Like I’m get really invested in these characters. I was immediately intrigued by her, but at the same time, I was furious with her because her object is her dog. And I’m like, you stupid bitch.
Like there is no way this dog is. And that’s the first thing he says to her, too. Yeah. Like, you’re an idiot. You’re an idiot.
Todd: Well, when she goes to the table, I was getting mad because it looked like she was gonna feed her dog and her and I’m like, oh my god, you know, like, don’t do this. But, uh, she claims that she will go hungry one day to feed the dog, so they take turns so that she doesn’t take any more of her
Craig: share.
And this part is a good… I don’t know, a quarter of the movie, but the, the important thing to realize is that she also came in willingly. She works for the administration, whatever that is. She was the person who, like, did his interview, checked him in, so she knows about him. And she has done that for years, and now she has put herself in here voluntarily, because she wants to prove…
That it works. What does she say? There’s a phrase that she uses, and I can’t… Remember what? Spontaneous something. Spontaneous
Todd: solidarity. Yeah, she’s, you know, she is the good person in the system, in government, or in an organization, or in a company that strongly believes in the goals of that company and that it can work.
She just, it just doesn’t. because people need a push or people need somebody to kind of lead them and, and people just don’t get it, you know, and they just need some patience and somebody to help. So what she does is she’s putting together two plates that she fills with rations that are enough that she calculated, I guess, that if everybody just ate this much, uh, all the way down, then everybody would get fed.
And there would be
Craig: enough for everybody. That’s where that social commentary comes in again, because there is enough. For everybody. Mm-hmm. . It’s just that the people at the top are hogging it or, or spoiling it and like it’s, it’s so blatant. It is, but it’s also true. Like .
Todd: Yeah, it’s true. And it’s maddening.
Craig: And, and, and we’ll get, I, I live in America and people are so instinctively, I, I like the, the idea of socialism. It is as though you suggested that we all adopt Satanism, like people would, people would put themselves in their graves before that they would even consider the idea of a socialist society.
It’s possible. We see it in other parts of the world and yet we are so frightened of it. And I’m not, don’t come at me, I’m not a communist, I’m not a socialist, I’m, you know, like, I, as a white man in middle America, I thrive in this capitalist society, so don’t come at me, but it does bother me that there are people who are suffering and Unnecessarily, like, come on y’all, like, we should be able to figure this out, like, it’s so obvious, but that’s the thing, even in this movie, where they could share, they could all be fine, but they don’t, at the upper levels, they are gluttonous.
Todd: And this is the thing, is that the people at the upper levels were once at the lower levels. That’s, that’s a key point of this movie is they wake up and they keep getting moved around. They keep getting moved around randomly. And I mean, there’s no like, oh, there’s no indication, certainly at the movie that, you know, if they do well or they do something or don’t do something at one level that they’re going to be rewarded with a higher level.
There’s nothing like that. You know, again. That’s life here. You can be born into a wealthy family in a great position. You can lose it all tomorrow for some reason and be down in the dumps, but then, you know, you can be clever and somehow work and get some back and then lose that too. Or the opposite, you know, this is basically how life works for all of us.
At any point in our life, we should all be so lucky to even maintain the sort of quote unquote status that we’re at. But We come upon fortune, we come upon misfortune, uh, we are not really in control. Most of the time over these kinds of things as much as people would like to say, Oh, you can just pull your up with yourself up by your bootstraps and as long as you’re in this capitalist society, you can go far.
It’s all you’re doing. The reality is, that’s not the case, right? There’s too many other factors and there’s too many things that can go wrong, you know? And I like that fire hits your house. You go in a car accident. Now you can’t work. All these things can happen. And that’s I love that about this movie. I
Craig: like that message of the movie is heavy handed as it is, but it’s very much, you know, there, but for the grace of God, like you could find yourself in any position.
And I don’t even know, like, I really liked this lady, this imagery. And she, she tries, she tries to communicate with the people below and above. She tries so hard. She tries to incentivize them. Yeah. And the only thing that compels the people below is when, uh, our main guy finally gets fed up with her pleading and says to the people below, if you don’t do this rationing, I will shit on your food.
Todd: Every day. I’ll mix it in with every little piece of it and you will have shit in your food. And that, that works. That compels them. Oh my god, that’s great. She’s like, tell the people up above. And he’s like, well, I can’t shit upwards. Right.
Craig: I actually thought that was a really compelling line! It really
Todd: was.
It tells you all you need to know. No!
Craig: Anyways, I really like her. I don’t know. Eventually the woman comes down and eats her dog. Right. But, sorry, but that lady, you had that coming. That dog wasn’t gonna last in there. Then we find out that the reason that she came in to try to effect change is because she has terminal cancer.
Yeah, and she, you know, like she has lacerations on her skin and stuff that she shows us and then the month ends and they get moved and he wakes up and immediately sees that they are on level two. Oh, two. And she killed herself before he even had time to wake up. She’s like, fuck this. No. And I think she was probably in the right.
Because, oh my God, I don’t know, he just fasts for that
Todd: whole month, doesn’t he? He really does. Yeah, something like that. They, they have
Craig: running water. Yeah. And the truth of the matter is, a human being can survive for a month without food, as long as they have water. It will be miserable. I couldn’t, not me, but somebody, somebody who is in reasonable shape, physical condition could survive for a month.
They had to film this movie chronologically because they had to show his gradual deterioration. He lost like 30 pounds, um, over the course of the movie, but he basically just fast for that month. And then when he wakes up. He’s on level six. And he has a new roommate, this really cool guy named Bharat, who is an idealist.
And I loved
Todd: this character, too. He was a smart guy. I guess he has to be, for his object to be rope. So he’s got it, but he’s also very religious. And you get this feeling that him and maybe people in the upper levels, or could be, or maybe he just thinks they can be persuaded by, you know, appealing to a higher power.
Right. He’s saying to the guys up above, they’re like, why should we help you? And he says, God talked to me and he said that if you guys help me, you know, you’ll, you’ll, you’ll get great things. And the guys upstairs are like, oh, well, if God said that, then… Yeah, maybe we should. Oh, shouldn’t we do that, honey?
Yeah, okay, sure, we will. So he tosses his rope up, and, uh, they hold onto the rope at the top, and he starts climbing the rope. He’s reaching for the ledge, and the woman up there sticks her bare ass out over the edge and shits on his face.
Craig: Yeah. Wow. Uh… Yeah, that’s pretty impressive. Ha ha ha ha ha ha! She was prepped and ready.
I can’t do that either. Yeah.
Todd: I hear it’s easier when you squat, maybe that helped. They’re just, they’re just
Craig: bigoted. Yeah. And, like, they’re so close, like, they’re so close to the top, and this guy has a rope. Like, these people are so blinded by their bigotry that they, and maybe, who knows, maybe they haven’t been there long enough to be concerned about it, but the, the dude has a rope, like, and, and only five stories to go, like, if you could just convince everybody you could climb out of there, potentially, but they’re so blinded by their bigotry that they don’t even care about that, and they’re gross.
They, like, audibly f k up there and stuff. Like, it’s disgusting. But these guys are both idealists now. Um, the main guy and Barra, and the main guy Goring says, you know what we should do? We should, we should just ride the platform down and force. The Rationing. Because if we force it, then they will understand that it can work.
Yeah. And that’s what they do. He convinces them and they write down. And, uh, Bara starts to ration out food to, like, the next level. And, uh, Goring’s like, Nope! These people have eaten for the past several days. We’re gonna wait until we get to level 50. And at level 50… We’ll start handing out the food, and that’s what they do, and of course, you know, they have to be violent sometimes, sometimes they don’t, sometimes people comply.
It’s obviously a risky thing, and it’s an exciting part of the movie, but it seems like their plan is working until, like, I don’t remember, I feel like they have to beat several people, maybe kill some people. But then they get down to one level, where Barat… Runs into a guy that he knows, who was like a mentor to him or something?
What was
Todd: that? That was really shoehorned in there. Yeah, it was just a guy in a wheelchair, and he says, Oh, who is he? And, and Barad says, Oh, he’s a wise man. And he suddenly perks up and listens to this guy. And he says This is
Craig: where things got weird for me. Like, I, I didn’t really understand all of this. I mean, like, I under I understand the narrative.
I understand what’s happening. I just don’t understand. The meaning behind what’s going
Todd: on. I think this is the meaning. Okay, so, um, he basically says, Good manners are important. You can’t be forcing people, but you need to help them. Blah, blah, blah, There’s all this stuff. But then he says, Look, the administration has no conscience.
How are they gonna know up at the top if you’re successful? You know, because… Either way, all of the food is going to be gone when that platform reaches the very, very top. So, uh, they decide they need a delicious, perfectly made dish, a luxury dish, that gets back to level zero, untouched. And he’s like, imagine their faces.
When they see the hole, send a dish back like that. Then, they will get the message. They decide that they’re going to use the, the, uh, Panacotta. The Panacotta. Take care,
Craig: take care of Panacotta as though your life depends on it. It will be the message. Okay, alright.
Todd: Well, I mean, it’s interesting because if you think about this in a classist way, right?
There is, I think, a certain attitude at the top of society that’s like, you know what? No matter what we do for these people, these people below us, the end result is always the same. They’re always going to fritter away the taxes that we give them. They’re going to fritter away the welfare that they have.
You know what I’m saying? And they’re just going to keep asking for more and more and more and more. And, and, uh, it’s their fault, you know? And in this case, if something comes back, it means that they all took as much as they needed and not anymore. And, and, and kind of like upends that whole… Okay. Okay.
That’s how I interpret it, anyway.
Craig: So then, so then the cooks at the top are gonna be like, oh, like, I don’t get it, like.
Todd: Well, there’s always some ambiguity about this as well, because it’s like, what is the, you know, what, what’s the purpose of this thing? You know, what, what’s their goal? You know? But
Craig: I also feel like it’s stupidly optimistic, like.
Yeah. No, nobody’s gonna care. Like, nobody cares. For sure. Send the panna cotta back up. Nobody cares. Well Like,
Todd: so what? Well, you know, I mean, it’s just, uh, it’s sort of the same thing. Like, of course they don’t care. Because we keep seeing these shots of that kitchen, and the guy’s like, got the cooks lined up, and he’s berating them because he found a hair in, I think was the panna cotta, actually.
Uh, and he’s like, yelling at them, and trying to figure out whose hair it is, and, you know, berating them for not having a perfect dish. It’s like, these people are focused on the wrong things. They’re so out of touch with the real problems down below them that they can’t see. And, and you would imagine if this chef got the most exquisite panna cotta returned to him, like, why didn’t anybody eat that?
It would at least give him some pause. I, I guess. And the hope is, it would make him think, maybe I’ve been focused on the wrong thing all along. However, I agree with you. I don’t think that most of us believe that that would… Yeah. Because they’re so in that own, their own world, you know, and they’re, they’re so focused on the wrong thing.
I,
Craig: and, and really it’s kind of been this way through the whole movie, but I feel at this point I really just kind of had to tell myself, just go with it. Like, okay, fine. Fine. It’s not perfect. The panna cotta is important. Whatever. Who cares? Um, so they get, they keep going down and they’re handing out food.
They, they, they try at this, you know, based on the wheelchair guy’s advice, they try To rationalize with people, but if they have to resort to violence, they resort to violence. They eventually get to a really low level. I don’t remember where, but they’re really low and they come to a cell where. Two huge guys are like killing people one of those people.
I think is the woman. Yeah platform woman Yeah, it is goring pulls the huge guy. That’s killing her off And then that guy beats the shit out of him. Yeah and and Bara is Fighting the other guy and I I guess they eventually kill those big guys But the woman is dead,
Todd: right? Yeah, the woman’s dead. So it was a you know that part You know was was a you pointless.
The woman
Craig: is dead They’re both in terrible shape like goring it like is beaten to a bloody pulp and the other guy got Stabbed or slashed or something, right? Yeah, I don’t know Anyway, so but they keep going down and they pass a level 250 Which is what goring it calculated was the lowest level and it just keeps going and going but the platform It doesn’t stop at every level because it doesn’t stop if people are dead and everybody’s dead.
Yeah. Just tons of dead people. But they also pass, like, they just pass a series of randos. Um, and in one, there are two naked men in a… Inflatable baby pool? I, I, I read the, I think those were the screenwriters? That’s hilarious. Oh, no way. That’s what I read, I don’t know if it’s true or not. But they, they stop at level, The, uh, Barat’s like, We still have the panna cotta, the panna cotta’s the message.
But they stop at level 333. Which, you know, three is a magic number, so it makes sense, but I read, I didn’t come up with this on my own, I read this, if there are two people per cell, that means that there are 666 people in this prison, which makes this prison hell itself. Okay, so, they end at level 333, and it stops there because there’s somebody alive.
And it’s a child, the child that I kind of expected that they would eventually find, but it’s a girl. Why, throughout the rest of the movie, were they saying that it was a boy? Because,
Todd: this is all weird, because, uh, Imogiri, because she was in the administration, right, admitting people, she said she admitted that girl.
She said that Yeah, and she’s right. Yeah, the woman, I mean, not the little girl, but the woman who was presumably looking for a son, and she said she didn’t come in with anybody else, they don’t even allow children, they’re very strict on no under 17s in here. She said she wanted to be the next Asian Marilyn Monroe, she came in here hoping to be an actress when she could come out, now she’s just gone crazy killing people searching for her non existent son.
Um, so she just said that was all a, a lie. So that begs the question, was this girl even related to that woman? Now they’re both Asian, uh, Asian looking, and number two, if she isn’t related to that girl, how did a girl, when the, you know, Imogiri claimed that there are no kids allowed in here, how did there get to be a kid in there?
Was that like, born to someone in there?
Craig: Or, And she’s at the very bottom level. And presumably remains there. But I don’t under How does
Todd: she survive? Right, how does she
Craig: survive? Because she doesn’t even look sick. You
Todd: know why? She looks healthy. She’s the Christ figure, I think. In this whole
Craig: thing. I, I, I mean, I get, I think so, like, because then, Goran’s like, she’s hungry, give her the panna cotta, and Barat’s like, but the panna cotta’s the message.
And he’s like, no, she’s the message.
Oh god. And then there’s like, oh, I forgot to mention that throughout all of this, Goran is still hallucinating. All of his previous roommates, so like, uh, Imogury appears to him at this point and says, Ramses II is the message. Well, that was her dog. Then Baharet says, the girl is the message, and then he dies, I guess from his injuries from before.
So, Goring and the girl, she eats the panna cotta, and then they board the platform, and they go down. Level 333 appears to be the final cell, and below that, it just descends into vast… Darkness. Like, it’s crazy! And it goes all the way down, and his first roommate, Chirmagasi, is there, and he says, Your journey is over, my snail.
There’s something about snails that we’re not getting.
Todd: Yeah, I think you’re right. He keeps calling him Little Snail. There was an earlier thing where he found that there were snails uneaten, surprisingly, all the way, you know, halfway. Way far down into the
Craig: Cuz that was his favorite thing, but wait, nobody had touched it.
I mean, who wants to eat snails? Gross. Goring’s like, the girl is the message. And, uh, Trimagasi says to him, but the message doesn’t need a bearer. Yeah. So, Goring gets off the platform and walks away with Trimagasi into the vast darkness. Right. And then, with the little girl asleep on the platform, It shoots like a rocket up through, and that’s it.
Like, we don’t see where it ends, we don’t see what happens. It’s just, it’s over. It’s
Todd: interesting because I saw, like I said, I really feel like the girl, there’s some Catholic imagery throughout this, there’s religious stuff kind of being said. I thought that one of the last images that we saw of Goring, He looked very Christ like, you know, with the light coming down on him and his hair and just sort of very Classically posed as he was looking up at the girl going up.
It just looked straight out of The same image that you see in paintings of the crucifixion work, you know Christ is on the cross and he’s kind of slack jawed But his eyes are looking up toward the light I thought was so pointed that I think it had to be significant But again, I’m not real clear on all the metaphorical stuff in here.
It’s still little Messy for me, and I do wonder if it’s a little mixed. You know? It’s maybe not that perfect. I think, I think, obviously, like, these levels, they have some parallel to the Dante’s levels of hell. Yeah, right. And, uh, when he gets to the bottom, and they’re just in the void, it’s like he’s passed through hell, and he joins the hallucination of the dead guy, and they walk away together into the darkness.
I figure that means that he’s dead. But his death was not without purpose. His death was… But ultimately, and now send without purpose to send the girl up. You know, like he was responsible for getting the panna cotta all the way down to the level where the girl was so he could feed her the panna cotta, realize she’s the message, and then, um, he dies and then sends the girl up to the heavens.
I, you know,
Craig: I’m really perplexed by that line. The message doesn’t need a bearer, right? Like, ah, like I. It seems so significant and I feel like I should be able to connect it to something. And I’m just not really sure. Oh boy. This is a, like, I, I want this to be an interactive episode,
Todd: right? Somebody
Craig: guys, you guys, you guys out there talk to us about this.
Cause like, I’m genuinely curious if we’re missing, like, I don’t, I don’t feel dense about it. Like, I feel like I get it. There are just elements of it that I can’t quite. Put the puzzle pieces together, and, and I’m genuinely curious, I wanna know, so if, if you’re listening, and you have thoughts, please share them with us on one of our various platforms.
Well, there
Todd: have to be, because this was like the most popular Spanish film in Netflix history, and that’s why it’s getting a sequel. Really? Did you know it’s getting a sequel? It’s getting a sequel. They’re done shooting it and, uh, it’s gonna be coming out. I don’t think they’ve released the release date yet, but it, uh, yeah.
I I’m surprised. I am too. This doesn’t seem like the kind of movie that would have a sequel. No. But apparently there’s more to say or more to explain.
Craig: I don’t know. Cube had like two or three sequels that were… Ultimately unnecessary. Like, cause it’s
Todd: kind of the same movie. But that movie was kind of schlocky and didn’t…
I mean, that movie was, uh… It
Craig: was more of a comment… Well, I mean, this is too, I suppose. It was kind of a commentary on human nature. It was. Whatever. But, no, I can’t imagine what they would do with a sequel. It seems like kind of
Todd: a… I don’t know. What happens to the girl when she gets to the top and how they deal with that?
Maybe they change the thing? Right?
Craig: Is it… Are there these prisons? Like, are there more of them? Like, is it a whole deal? Like, I, I don’t even know. It, there’s a, I, Alan and I watched a show, I don’t remember what it was on, one of the streaming services. We watched this show called Silo. Have you ever heard of this?
And it’s like this society that lives all within this gigantic silo. They can’t go outside. Because it’s like nuclear wasteland
Todd: outside. But do they have to send people outside to like clean the lens or something like that? Yes. Oh, this is based on a real popular series of web novels called Wool. Oh yeah, uh huh.
Did they make that
Craig: into a movie? No, it’s a television series. They did, uh, there’s only one season, but Alan and I watched it. Yeah. Anyway, it reminds me of this. Yeah. Rando. Anyway, but like, I liked this movie. I really did. I was, like, I feel like on paper, I would think that it was going to be really slow and tedious, but it’s not.
I was, I was engaged the whole time. I was, I think that it’s really well acted. I was really invested in, in the characters and I wanted to know how it was going to, Turn out. Yeah, even though the ending is Ambiguous it didn’t feel unsatisfying like a satisfying end To the story and yeah, I I would recommend I I would 100 percent recommend this movie.
It’s good It’s well made it’s well acted. It’s interesting I don’t really have any
Todd: complaints. I think it’s gonna be a love it or you hate it kind of movie. I think some people are really into this. They, and like you said, it’s a little bit better than just a simple, like, very pretentious, artsy, metaphorical movie that you kinda after a while are rolling your eyes at because you know that I’m not even supposed to understand this.
No, like, you’re supposed to understand this and Yeah. Like have to be stupid not to really. Even though there’s some ambiguity that leaves a lot of things up to interpretation. That’s not so maddening. Yeah. Um, because what’s happening is compelling, and also, you know, you kind of wanted to provide some answers.
I think the whole time I’m going through this movie, like, How are they gonna solve this? Then we can apply that to our real our lives, you know? Like, like, have they cracked the code and figured out how this is all supposed to work? But they haven’t. Or maybe they have. I don’t know.
Craig: Well, that’s why I said that a more definitive…
Ending, I think, would have come across as trite, because you can’t just magically solve these issues. Yes. So, to suggest that, I don’t know, maybe they are suggesting that by some miracle, you can. But that’s in the fantasy world of the movie. Is it? So, I, I, I think that it’s smart to end it where it ends.
Todd: This just came to me. If they’re not expecting a child because they have a, the administration has a strong, uh, complete, no under 17, or no under 17 people allowed in here, the presence of a child would shock them. And then it would make them question, number one, how did that child get there? And number two, how did that child survive to the point where…
She could be sent from the bottom all the way to the top and that might cause them to Seriously retool their thinking about the humanity and the the way that society that that society down below them works And their hope for it Or their lack of
Craig: hope for it. I don’t know. I think it’s meant to be, like, messianic.
But…
Todd: Yeah, because this child should be dead. Right. And this brutality of the lower levels, especially down here, like, this child would not survive. And the fact that she did would… Yeah, messianic, of course.
Craig: And that’s, like, that’s a very… Quaint story to record in the Bible, but like, that’s not like, no, nobody’s going to care.
Like in the real world, in real life, she could be literal Jesus and the
Todd: people at the top wouldn’t care. No, that’s true. That’s very true. Maybe that’s what the sequel is going to show us. Maybe. Oh boy. Well, this was a fun movie to talk about. Thank you so much, Craig, for recommending it. You’re welcome. And thank you to all of you for listening, and I, I second what Craig said earlier.
We would really love for this to spark some discussion because we feel, as we’ve said in here, that there are a number of things that we are maybe just too stupid to pick up on. Please, um, enlighten us. Let us know what we’re missing. It would be lovely to, uh, have those conversations with you guys. And appreciate this movie even more.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with a friend. Uh, if you would like to get in more deep conversations with us, we have a lot of back and forth with our patrons. If you just go to patreon. com slash chainsaw podcast, uh, consider joining and supporting our podcast. You can get a lot of behind the scenes chatter with us.
Sort of a direct line, as well as, uh, influence the episodes by choosing which movies we’re going to do. And, uh, we do a lot of minisodes up there as well, where we reveal a little bit more about our lives and things we’re reading and just random stuff that our patrons want to
Craig: hear. I’m having a lot of fun on the Patreon page.
Todd: Me too. Chatting it up, making friends. Come on over. We all float down here. Until next time, I’m Todd. And I’m Craig. With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.
418 episod
Manage episode 377402803 series 98583
This week, we tackle a pandemic favorite. This week’s flick is a highly metaphorical film about class and capitalism that resonated with people caught quarantined in their homes in 2020, when they had nothing better to do than watch Netflix and contemplate the future of humanity. How does it hold up in 2023? Have a gander at our hot take on The Platform. Cheers to the capitalists out there!
The Platform (2019)
Episode 360, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw
Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.
Craig: And I’m Craig.
Todd: This week, Craig picked the movie. The movie that we’re doing is the twenty… 2020? 2019, right? It’s all good. The platform’s somewhere in the vicinity of 2019. I do remember, though, this movie was kind of in discussion along the same lines as The Tiger King.
Remember when we were all in pandemic mode, and we were all locked in our houses for the first time, and everybody kind of started watching Netflix a little bit more, and The Tiger King became kind of a big… Thing that we were all discussing I feel like it really hit a big pandemic wise because it was so weird and this movie I do remember people discussing it like though.
There’s this movie out on Netflix called The Platform You got to watch it It has a lot to say about what we’re going through right now or something like that At least it kind of seemed to resonate at the time. So I remember hearing about it. I never watched it until today, but you recommended it this week and you had seen it before right?
Craig: Yeah, I think I’ve been talking about it since I heard that it was coming out and, like, talking to you about it, like, this is something that we should keep our eyes on. This is something we should do, but as is often the case, like, I get really excited about these movies and I might throw the name out there or whatever, but then they come out and we’ve already got, you know, a bunch of stuff that we’re doing or whatever.
So I just watch them on my own. After that, I kind of forget about it. So, so when, when we decided that I was going to pick this week. You know, I was, you know, racking my brain and this, uh, came to me because I did think that it would be interesting to talk about. Yes, I’ve seen it before. Uh, I don’t know, probably a year ago.
Um, but, uh, even watching it again, I think it’s interesting. But when I was watching it, I was also thinking, I wonder what Todd’s
Todd: thinking. Like… What did you think I would be thinking? I’m curious.
Craig: Do you really? You want me to tell you? Okay. I’ll tell
Todd: you if you’re right. I’ll be honest.
Craig: I am afraid that you will think that this movie is pretentious and preachy.
Todd: No, I’ll knock that right off at the pass. I don’t think it’s pretentious and preachy. It doesn’t hide its theme very well. It’s very No, it is
Craig: bold on its face. Yeah.
Todd: If
Craig: you don’t get this allegory, you are in a coma because it is so obvious.
Todd: But that in a way kind of makes it a little less pretentious. A lot of times, like, I don’t remember, recently we were talking about pretentiousness.
The Bad Batch you were all pissy about. That was a lot. Because I felt like the Bad Batch was almost the opposite. It was being very vague about things and it was… Well, that’s not true. No, I’m totally wrong. I, but I get
Craig: what you’re saying, and I agree with you. Like, it just seemed like it was trying to be confusing for the sake
Todd: of it.
Yes. And this isn’t trying to be confusing. No. It ends up like… Ambiguous, you know, at the end, you can’t really say for sure as far as plot goes what, what exactly is happening. Why is this happening? There are a lot of little unsolved mysteries in this whole affair that you’re not going to get a resolution for at the end Uh, once again, I don’t think the movie is really that concerned with giving us an answer to those mysteries In fact, I, I read somewhere I don’t know if it’s the IMDB trivia or somewhere that the director had actually shot an alternate ending that he didn’t end up going with because he decided he liked this ending because it was a little more ambiguous and you could kind of fill in the blanks.
Did
Craig: whatever you read say what the alternate ending
Todd: was? No. How about you?
Craig: No, I, I, I couldn’t find much about, no, I know, but I would be super curious because you’re right. I mean, here we’re jumping right to the ending. Like the ending is. It’s ambiguous, but… It didn’t bother me, I think, largely because any more, um, of a definitive ending I think would have felt trite to me.
No matter what it was. No matter what it was. I just think, I think that it was better left open ended. Like, cause, cause it’s addressing, like, the thing that this movie is addressing is classism. Yeah, and
Todd: like capitalism in a way capitalism.
Craig: Yeah, I suppose but but there I’m just saying that there is no It’s not like there’s a solution like yeah, it doesn’t help just right.
You can’t just casually be like Oh, this is how we end this no Yeah
Todd: I’m getting ahead of myself. I think the movie is actually quite clever Because it does pose lots of different solutions. I mean, you can see the parallels immediately. And it keeps, kind of keeps your brain working, and then you’re excited to see which of these solutions that they’re coming up with is actually going to work.
And the answer is, well, life doesn’t really work that neatly, does it? Right? Like, all these different solutions to the problems that these characters are facing have their own challenges and difficulties. And in some ways, I felt like the movie was a little depressing. Ha ha ha. In that it almost made it seem like there is no solution.
Except that there was a certain… This is why I want somebody to interpret the ending for me. Because there was a certain level of, uh, degree of, I don’t know, positivity? In the ending?
Craig: It’s, uh, like, I feel like… Goodness… Exists. Like, it’s there. There is goodness, there is hope, but… Only at the very bottom of the pit.
We have to start, we have to start talking. We have to start
Todd: talking about the movie. Well, really quick, just before we dive into it, uh, you brought it up just because it had been too long? Or was there something that… Because I think it’s really
Craig: interesting. I think the concept is fascinating. Like, I don’t even, I think that this movie kind of defies…
Definition in terms of how you would categorize it yeah, because I think to categorize this as horror
Todd: is Broad it’s pretty broad to categorize it as sci fi is not entirely accurate To categorize it as dystopian Perhaps it kind of it’s never really clear if this world is dystopian
Craig: exactly because we don’t have any greater context Yeah, it’s very interesting okay, so the premise is it’s this Institution, like, I guess the best word for it would be prison.
Todd: Except, you can voluntarily go there. Yeah,
Craig: that’s so weird! Like, it seems like, it’s so bizarre. I think that some people are, like, sentenced to go there, but then other people can elect to go there and And get a reward. Why? In God’s name! Oh, so it’s I don’t understand that. I
Todd: don’t understand that. I think I understand it.
Because it all plays into the metaphor. Because this vertical prison ultimately, I think, is a metaphor for a capitalistic society where there isn’t an authority, you know, on top telling you what you can and can’t do or evenly distributing the wealth, like, you know, communism or whatever. This is everyone is truly left to their own devices to work out how are they going to live amongst the resources that they have.
And so, you know, because there are many different kinds of societies in the world, you can elect to, for example, come to America from a place that you didn’t agree with and get, presumably, your reward. One of the chara the main character that we follow in this movie, his name is Gorang, he is… coming here and has signed up for it because at the end of it, he’s going to get a degree, an honorary degree from some university, which would presumably help his education and stuff like that.
And, you know, again, I don’t think it’s this direct of a parallel, but for example, thematically, a person from an impoverished country might decide, hey, I’m going to go to the USA to get my education because it’s going to be easier for me. Yes, I might have to endure the difficulties of getting along in this new system and, and, and finding my way with new language and everything like that, but it’s going to be worth the struggle because at the end of it, they can supply me with this, you know, and I, where I can’t get it otherwise, or it’s too hard for me to get it otherwise.
I don’t know. Is that convincing?
Craig: Yeah. It is. It very much is. And I’m sitting here leaning back in my chair with my arms crossed like, Oh shit, Todd thought about this way more than I did.
Todd: Well I’m really hoping that you’re gonna have thought about more of it because there’s so many questions I have. But yeah, I think that’s it.
And then some of us are just born here and we’re in the system and there’s nothing we can do about it. And so I feel like that might be the difference in why you could elect. To be there and why you couldn’t even, uh, we get flashbacks to his.
Craig: Interview. Like, you have to like, interview to go to prison.
Todd: It’s crazy. But again, this is like, what an immigrant has to go through. It is not easy to come, I mean, let’s just take the US as an example. And I think I’ll just, we’ll do that. Like, you know, asterisk right now, whenever I talk about capitalism, I’m, Capitalistic Society, I’m probably talking about what I know best, which is the US.
Uh, to come to the US, you know, it’s a pain in the ass. for someone who hasn’t been born there, doesn’t have an American passport for any reason. They’ve gotta go through an interview, and they gotta put documents together and all this stuff, and they might be turned away.
Craig: That, that’s, that’s really, that’s honestly fascinating to me, because I hadn’t considered it on that level, and now I feel kind of stupid, because I, I think you’re right.
I mean, that’s what they’re trying to show, but it was just so bizarre to me, like, that he elects to go in there. Yes, he’s gonna be rewarded with A prestigious degree or something, I don’t know, whatever. But he says that the reason that he’s going in is to quit smoking and to read Don Quixote. Yeah. You don’t have to go to prison to do that, oh boy.
Well. But we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re burying the lead because the lead is that yes, this is a prison, but it, it consists of cells. That are occupied by two people each, but they are all stacked on top of each other
Todd: vertically. Yeah. .
Craig: And you have, like, in the beginning of the movie, you have no idea because wherever our characters are and, and there’s a shaft, like there’s a, a
Todd: rectangular shaft.
Yeah. Like the size of a bed or a big table through the whole thing. Yeah.
Craig: Like a huge table or like a, yeah, a big bed or something. But wherever they are. When they look up or down. It just looks infinite. So you have no idea How big this thing is. Right. Gosh, we have to explain the platform But what I was thinking in watching this is I think that whoever makes movies like this, they’re, they’re genius, but it’s not like this hasn’t been done before.
Um, have we done the movie Cube? Oh yeah. Uh, on this podcast?
Todd: Did we do that? Of course it made me think of Cube, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because
Craig: the whole movie is set… Or is filmed on a, like, 20×20 set. Yeah. Like, it’s exac the entire thing is filmed on the same set. Because every location is exactly the same.
Because they’re just these
Todd: infinite cells. Rooms connected to each other, yeah. Yep, mhm. But, because
Craig: of that… I would also expect that it might be slow or boring because there’s really not a ton of action. Right. But I was intrigued and engaged from start to finish. Mm hmm. Both times.
Todd: Yes. Were you? I was.
Yeah, I was intrigued. As the movie was going on, I was a little worried because I thought too much about Cube. Like, I think when we talked about the Cube episode, the thing that kind of maddened me about Cube was that there really, at the end of the day, is no clear explanation as to what’s going on here.
And the movie is… Again, more about the interactions between these characters and how they break down and how they fight and, and how they do or do not work together to get to a solution that is not even clear to any of them. They’re like, just as clueless as any of the people in this thing, uh, where they are in it, how high it goes, how low it goes.
All they know is that when they wake up in the morning, after um, every month that they’re there, I guess they get gassed or something. And then when they wake up in the morning, they’re in a different… Height. And it’s marked clearly on the wall, which one they’re in. Yeah, which level. He starts out on floor 48 in the movie.
Uh, but his cellmate that he’s in there has been in there for many, many months, uh, before. And, uh, he says, Oh, no, you know, sometimes you wake up really high up, like to floor 6. And one time I was down to floor 132. Without any real clear reason why. I think the thing that bothered me more about Cube was that, uh, by the end of it, still I, I didn’t feel like, uh, satisfied.
I think one person ends up, spoiler alert, if you haven’t seen Cube, I think one person ends up actually exiting the Cube. And they just sort of exit into a big white light. And then the filmmakers are like, You, it could be whatever you want. I’m like, no, f k you. I hate that. You know? I hate that, and I hated that about the Bad Batch.
You know, that to me feels pretentious. Most of the time. I think if the movie leading up to it isn’t satisfying enough, then it feels especially pretentious. This movie leading up to this semi ambi sort of ambiguous ending still felt right. It’s very ambiguous,
Craig: I would argue. But I think that, uh, the reason that it worked so well for me is because I found the characters so compelling.
Yeah. Like, all of them. And there are only a handful. There are only like four or five. Really, I mean there are other people, but characters that you actually get to know a little bit, there are only four or five. And I found them all so compelling. This is a foreign film. It’s what,
Todd: Spanish? Yeah, and so you’re not going to get many clips from the episode in here, I’m afraid guys, sorry.
Yeah, well I watched
the
Craig: dub,
Todd: you watched it in Spanish? Oh yeah, I always do. Yeah. I, I, I, I found the… You know me! Speaking of pretentious…
I actually found the dub a little annoying. I found the older guy’s voice in the dub a little annoying and I, I had to switch to… The older guy’s voice was
Craig: kind of weird, like it didn’t match his… But it didn’t bother me. I actually thought the dub was quite good. Like, I was impressed by the, uh, voice performances.
I don’t know if my Netflix is, you know, automatically set to dub. I don’t know. That’s just what came up for me, so that’s… Oh, it first
Todd: came up that way for me, too. But, uh, I switched it after about… 10 minutes. Yeah.
Craig: Fancy.
Todd: You know, I have my way.
Craig: I get it. It’s funny. We’ve been doing this podcast for so long, which boggles my mind that we’ve been doing it for like a million years.
Um, but in like really super early episodes, I was like, I usually watch it in the foreign language and read the subtitles. And now I’m like, no. I have no time for that.
Todd: When did the switch come in? I recall that distinctly as well. It has not gone unnoticed on me that lately you’ve been more like, Yeah, I
Craig: watched the dub version.
I think that I am one of those people who is delusional about getting old. Like, I’ve had the same eyeglasses for probably 10 15 years. I need a new prescription. I can’t see, but I refuse to acknowledge the fact that my eyes are going bad. So I think that probably has something to do with it. Like, eh, I can’t bother to read those subtitles.
No, I can’t see them.
I found these characters so compelling. What we haven’t explained yet is that, okay, so they’re in this vertical shaft of a prison, but the food. The way that they are fed, gourmet, beautiful, gorgeous
Todd: food. Stodgy, like French cuisine type food. Yeah,
Craig: I mean this looks like… Uh, what was that movie we just did?
The Menu. Yeah. The Menu. This, when they, like, when they’re preparing the food, it just, it looks like art. It’s
Todd: gorgeous. The first scene in the movie is in this kitchen where an old man is, like, walking around in this beautiful, old classic looking French kitchen with, like, a whole army of chefs working in various…
stations and going around and correcting things. We don’t hear his voice. It’s, it’s, it’s more or less silent, but, uh, with the music playing, but, uh, we see him doing all that stuff that we talked about in the menu and all that stuff that you see in the cooking shows where they’re, you know, they’re carefully placing little petals of leaves on the plate, arranging the snails and everything.
And then he slaps somebody because, you know, he put it a millimeter off, you know, that kind of thing.
Craig: Right. Every dish is pristine and it is pristinely presented and they load up this huge rectangular platform. It’s beautiful. Take a picture, put it in a magazine. It’s gorgeous. The platform descends through this vertically stacked prison.
And so the people on level one get the food as it was prepared. The people keep eating as it goes down. It
Todd: like stops at each floor for, I don’t know, like a few minutes.
Craig: Five minutes, maybe, or something like that. Like they give them a little time to eat and then it continues down. And this is… The like, the most obvious metaphor, right?
So it’s like, it’s, you know, it’s society that the people at the upper levels get the best and the rest of us get what’s left over, um, until at the bottom, which is entirely uncertain. We have no idea what the bottom even is, but presumably they get nothing. Um, and the interesting thing about the metaphor, what I really, I do like.
This, because I think that it’s true. I think that it’s trying to hit home the fact that we are a part of a system like this. Mm hmm. But we just choose to be complacent about it. Mm hmm. Or assholes about it. Yeah. Like, unless, unless you’re at the very bottom, you’re complacent. Or you’re just an outright dick.
And frankly, if we are to apply this to modern society, I’m the complacent one. Like, my life isn’t luxurious, but I’m fine. You’re
Todd: like level 20 or something like that. Maybe 25. Sure,
Craig: sure. It’s, I’m, I’m, I’m not uncomfortable at all. So, it’s easy for me to…
Todd: To accept less than perfect.
Craig: Right. Right. Right. But…
You know, I try to be conscientious. Like, I try to help out the struggling guy and and whatnot, but the movie also suggests that even I am so complacent about it that I’m willing to literally shit on the people below me. You know what I
Todd: mean? Well, not necessarily you, but there are some who are willing to shit.
Perhaps the ones on the upper levels. And, uh, it’s interesting. Uh, I think there’s a narration at the beginning which I, it may be Trimagasi? The older man we’re talking about who is Gorang’s cellmate who says this? I’m not sure because I don’t, I didn’t go back to check. But he says there are three kinds of people.
The ones above, the ones below, And the ones who fall. That
Craig: is line two. Of my two pages of notes. Yeah. It’s like,
Todd: I have so many notes on
this table. We Trima Goss, he’s basically, uh, going through the tutorial on how the cell works, and we mostly explained all of it. And, uh, he tells him they’re on floor 48, and, uh, he’s wondering what their food’s gonna be. They can look down, and they can look up. He looks down, uh, Gorang, and starts to say something to the people down below, and he says, don’t pester those people.
Because they’re below and don’t call up because they’re not going to answer you because they’re above
Craig: we are on the same page Like you are reading from my notes It’s it’s such it’s such social commentary Don’t Esther the ones below because they are below the ones above won’t answer like hmm. Come on But it’s not annoying like in the context of this it’s not annoying it makes sense.
I believe it
Todd: I believe it, and it doesn’t feel preachy because the dynamics of how it goes down is so interesting and compelling. And there are some surprises in there where you’re just like, Yeah, you know what, I shouldn’t have been surprised at this. You know? So anyway, he’s in there, everybody gets to bring in an object.
His object is a book, Don Quixote. And the object can be whatever they want. But this guy… The old man, he asked him how he was in there, and he goes off on this tangent talking about, um, basically like a Ginsu knife commercial that he saw on TV. Uh, and he was super impressed by it, and he wondered, you know, maybe I should be sharpening my knives more often.
Maybe I have the le You know, Craig, like, maybe you should actually get This is hilarious. Get your, uh, prescriptions a little higher. Treat yourself a little bit. And he ends up Breaking the knife in as
Craig: he’s telling this story. The conclusion for us, the viewers is that he’s a crazy person. Yes.
And like, so he, he saw the Guinsoo knife. Infomercial, and so he ordered it, and then as soon as he got it, he saw another infomercial that was for, like, the Super Ginsu, and that broke his mind, and he turned into a crazy person. He was given he was given the option of either going into a mental institution, or coming to this place.
This place has a name. Oh, my God. I have something. It’s the V. S. M. C. The vertical self management center.
Todd: Yeah, we hear that later. Yeah, self management is key, right?
Craig: Self management, right? So this guy, Tremagasi has been there for many months already, and he’s only got like, he’s only got a couple of months left.
Six years. Six years. I don’t think so. this guy,
Todd: Tremagasi has been there for many months already. Six years. Six years. He said he’d been there for six years.
Craig: Boy, I don’t know how
Todd: he managed that. Well, he has a knife. Let’s put… Yeah,
Craig: he brought… That’s this thing. His object is the super knife. Like, at one point…
The thing about this knife is that it’s self sharpening. So, at one point, he’s like, The more I use it, the sharper it gets. Like, he’s just… Like, you live… You’re Goran. And you live in this little cell with a crazy person. With a knife, and it’s like a huge butcher knife. It’s hilarious.
Todd: I got, I got instant respect for this movie because it respected my intelligence.
Because immediately, Goran calls out what we were all thinking. Because uh, Trimogasi mentions at one time he was down at level 132. Right, right. He thinks there’s probably about 150 levels. And he said, uh, I didn’t get any food. And the guy says, well, then how did you eat? And he says, well, I didn’t say I didn’t eat.
I said I didn’t get any food. And, you know, that’s when he whiffs out the cut. And so instantly, Gorang runs over, you know, he’s basically like, you killed that guy, and you ate his flesh. Stay away from me.
Craig: He’s like, no I didn’t say that! Laughter Laughter But he did. Spoiler
Todd: alert! Now that Goring knows how this works, he he yells up to the people above, like, Hey, you go we need to warn them to ration the food!
And he stops and he says, Are you a communist?
Craig: Yeah, so other important things that we need to know is that, Occasionally, bodies just fall down the shaft. And it’s unclear… You know, we’re just in this one cell. We don’t know what happened. Like, did they fall? Did somebody kill them? Did they jump? Are they committing suicide?
Um, at some point, like when he’s explaining the food and stuff, Trimogasi says that as the they’re on each level for a full month. And he says that as the month goes on, there will be fewer above. But he won’t explain why and then bodies keep coming and then, um, we learn that you, you can’t keep food like you have to eat when the thing comes and you can’t hoard food or else they will either bake you or freeze you.
Todd: Yeah, because he grabs an apple and instantly everything, you know, once the, once the tray goes down, instantly everything gets really, really, really hot. So he is, he chucks the apple down the hole and everything’s fine again. I
Craig: know, and then we’ve already talked about, like, we went out of order, so we’ve already talked about how, why he got in there.
I’m sure… That Don Quixote, Don
Todd: Quixote, There’s some parallel here, right? Right, like, you know, I didn’t bother to think it through. He’s this
Craig: idealist, you know, He wants to believe that the world is a great place, and blah blah blah. Okay, whatever. Um, I, I still, I, he put himself in there for six months so he can get a degree.
Bro, just go to school. Like, this is ridiculous. There are lights in their room, and if it’s green, everything’s good. But if the red light goes on… That means that the platform has reached the bottom and is now ascending, and in a sense, at lightning speed. I don’t know if you would call it sci fi or fantasy because there is no explanation for the mechanics of this platform.
Yeah, it just floats. Yeah. Yeah, it just floats. Like, it’s not on chains, there aren’t rails, like it just… Yeah. Who knows? So there’s a woman that Yeah, that’s it. I’m trying to get to That’s what I was trying to get to. Uh, you take it.
Todd: Take it! Alright, alright. So someone falls down the hole. By the way, I think these are just people who give up.
You know? They’re done with life. Those
Craig: are those I think some of them are murdered. By the person that you’re about
Todd: to introduce. Yeah, I think that can happen. Yeah for sure. So anyway, this time someone comes down on the table and I like this bit too I’m like I would have thought of that too Like why didn’t somebody hop on the table and see what happens, right?
And there’s this girl sitting there So young woman sitting on this table and the dude says don’t worry about her. Just eat She comes down every month and she’s looking for her little boy Everyone in the hole is free to decide what they do. So What does she do? Uh, according to Trimagasi, she comes down every month and she kills her cellmate before she comes down.
She sits on the table and they kind of eat and she’s kind of creepy and stares. And, uh, she has a little shard of glass in her hand from one of the broken pottery dishes, because these dishes obviously get broken up as they go down. And when she gets to this lower level, She gets dragged off by the people below, and of course, Goreng is like, horrified.
It’s like, leave her alone! He wants to jump down there and help her. But, uh, Trimogasi says, no, no, no, no, and holds him back. And, uh, we hear a bunch of scuffle and some screaming, and the woman walks right back onto the table, sits there, looks up, and it descends a little further, and you realize she’s killed
Craig: those guys.
Right, having killed them. Right. But I really liked that scene because, first of all, this woman is not… I mean, she’s a petite woman. Clearly, she would be vulnerable to physical attack. And that’s what I liked about the, the level just below them. The men attack her and it’s clear what their intentions are.
Right. But she kills them. She fights them off. But I don’t know. It affected me because I then thought about. We have no idea how deep this thing is. Like, she’s facing this, potentially, at every level. Yeah. So, she needs to get down there for some reason. And if she’s doing this month after month, there’s something going on.
You know,
Todd: like, come on. I don’t even know. Do you understand this woman’s role in the whole metaphor? I’m not sure I do.
Craig: I don’t really. I don’t rea because ultimately I don’t really understand the metaphor, except for the, like, you know, like, as Whitney Houston told us, I believe the children are our future, like,
I don’t know, like, a child will lead them? I don’t know. And, and, everybody else, how, well, Trimogasi just says she’s looking for her son. How does he know that? Right. Because this woman never speaks, does she ever?
Todd: No, she never speaks. So how he
Craig: knows that, and then other people outright deny it, which we should get to.
They end up, uh, moving, uh, at one night. Trimogus, he’s like, there’s the gas, we’re gonna get moved. Goring wakes up at level 171, bound to the bed. Yeah. Because at level 171, that’s lower. I think Goring had said that he had been at like 132 or something before. And that at that level… There was nothing. There was no food.
And he estimated that there were probably 150 levels. So, now the fact that they’re at 171, there’s just no hope that they’re going to get anything. So, uh, he, he ties him down and his plan is… He’s gonna fast for as long as he can, but when he can’t fast anymore, then he’s gonna start eating him alive!
Todd: He’s pretty much planning to do it, and, and the reason why he
Craig: Oh, he’s definitely gonna do it!
The only reason he’s holding out is, like, for preservation.
Todd: Yeah, he said he’s gonna purge him like a snail. I don’t know much about eating snails, but, uh, he says with sail, you’ve gotta, like, Purge them for like six to seven days before you actually cook them to get the impurities out or something
Craig: like that I don’t know about snails either, but he makes a whole big deal of it And then like part of the interview process to get into prison They ask you what your favorite meal is so that they can include it On the menu, and Goring’s favorite meal is escargot.
Yeah. And later that comes up again. If there’s any significant meaning to that, I have no idea
Todd: what it does. It’s interesting. Well, what he says to him is really quite telling. I mean, it’s, it’s, again, it’s obvious this whole metaphor, but he says, uh, Don’t blame me, the people above me made me do it. There are 350 people to blame.
Before me. Again, the haves, they’ve taken everything from us. We get nothing, so I’m forced to do this. And it’s not my fault that I’m doing this. Whether it be lying, or cheating, or stealing. Whatever you do to somebody else because you’re desperate. I blame the people who have taken from me. Up
Craig: above. And even though he’s crazy.
Even though he’s crazy. Like, I get it. It makes sense. You know, you gotta eat. If you wanna live.
Todd: Yeah. You’re doing great. Yeah, you
Craig: know. So, the whole thing here is like, so he does, like, time passes very quick, well, not for them I’m sure, but for us, time passes very quickly here, and eventually, uh, the, the guy, the cellmate is like, yeah, I waited as long as I could, but, uh, I can’t wait anymore.
And he starts carving into his leg, but at that exact moment, coincidentally, the platform writing woman comes down on the platform, and she kills Tremegasi. Yep. Then, she, I, I feel like she stays. The night, you know, all by herself and and then she leaves again.
Todd: Well, she tries to feed him a piece. She helps him Oh,
Craig: that’s right.
She does she eats she carves some of him so much I’m aghast he often eats it and she feeds some to him and he eats it And then she leaves and then it seems like he kind of tries to hold off maybe for a little bit But then he ends up Eating the maggoty disgusting flesh of this guy too. Now, Trimogasi is still in the movie because now he appears as Hallucinations, which I also really liked.
Like, I thought this was fantastic. Uh, because you can’t I, I assume that it’s just all in his head, but the way that it’s presented, like, it could be a ghost. I don’t know. Ha ha ha, right. But I really liked it. But, uh, he’s still there and talking to him, and he’s like, we’re the same now. And then Goring has a sex dream about the woman.
Mm hmm. That’s kinda hot. And then, and then he wakes up. In level 33, which is a pretty high level, and he has a new roommate, and her name is Emigiri. Oh my gosh, and she looks
Todd: like Karen Black. Yeah, she does. And she was the woman who checked him in. She
Craig: was the woman who checked him in. And, gosh, like, I really liked her character.
Like, it was so interesting. It feels like a book. Like, that’s, like, the character development feels like a book. book. Like I’m get really invested in these characters. I was immediately intrigued by her, but at the same time, I was furious with her because her object is her dog. And I’m like, you stupid bitch.
Like there is no way this dog is. And that’s the first thing he says to her, too. Yeah. Like, you’re an idiot. You’re an idiot.
Todd: Well, when she goes to the table, I was getting mad because it looked like she was gonna feed her dog and her and I’m like, oh my god, you know, like, don’t do this. But, uh, she claims that she will go hungry one day to feed the dog, so they take turns so that she doesn’t take any more of her
Craig: share.
And this part is a good… I don’t know, a quarter of the movie, but the, the important thing to realize is that she also came in willingly. She works for the administration, whatever that is. She was the person who, like, did his interview, checked him in, so she knows about him. And she has done that for years, and now she has put herself in here voluntarily, because she wants to prove…
That it works. What does she say? There’s a phrase that she uses, and I can’t… Remember what? Spontaneous something. Spontaneous
Todd: solidarity. Yeah, she’s, you know, she is the good person in the system, in government, or in an organization, or in a company that strongly believes in the goals of that company and that it can work.
She just, it just doesn’t. because people need a push or people need somebody to kind of lead them and, and people just don’t get it, you know, and they just need some patience and somebody to help. So what she does is she’s putting together two plates that she fills with rations that are enough that she calculated, I guess, that if everybody just ate this much, uh, all the way down, then everybody would get fed.
And there would be
Craig: enough for everybody. That’s where that social commentary comes in again, because there is enough. For everybody. Mm-hmm. . It’s just that the people at the top are hogging it or, or spoiling it and like it’s, it’s so blatant. It is, but it’s also true. Like .
Todd: Yeah, it’s true. And it’s maddening.
Craig: And, and, and we’ll get, I, I live in America and people are so instinctively, I, I like the, the idea of socialism. It is as though you suggested that we all adopt Satanism, like people would, people would put themselves in their graves before that they would even consider the idea of a socialist society.
It’s possible. We see it in other parts of the world and yet we are so frightened of it. And I’m not, don’t come at me, I’m not a communist, I’m not a socialist, I’m, you know, like, I, as a white man in middle America, I thrive in this capitalist society, so don’t come at me, but it does bother me that there are people who are suffering and Unnecessarily, like, come on y’all, like, we should be able to figure this out, like, it’s so obvious, but that’s the thing, even in this movie, where they could share, they could all be fine, but they don’t, at the upper levels, they are gluttonous.
Todd: And this is the thing, is that the people at the upper levels were once at the lower levels. That’s, that’s a key point of this movie is they wake up and they keep getting moved around. They keep getting moved around randomly. And I mean, there’s no like, oh, there’s no indication, certainly at the movie that, you know, if they do well or they do something or don’t do something at one level that they’re going to be rewarded with a higher level.
There’s nothing like that. You know, again. That’s life here. You can be born into a wealthy family in a great position. You can lose it all tomorrow for some reason and be down in the dumps, but then, you know, you can be clever and somehow work and get some back and then lose that too. Or the opposite, you know, this is basically how life works for all of us.
At any point in our life, we should all be so lucky to even maintain the sort of quote unquote status that we’re at. But We come upon fortune, we come upon misfortune, uh, we are not really in control. Most of the time over these kinds of things as much as people would like to say, Oh, you can just pull your up with yourself up by your bootstraps and as long as you’re in this capitalist society, you can go far.
It’s all you’re doing. The reality is, that’s not the case, right? There’s too many other factors and there’s too many things that can go wrong, you know? And I like that fire hits your house. You go in a car accident. Now you can’t work. All these things can happen. And that’s I love that about this movie. I
Craig: like that message of the movie is heavy handed as it is, but it’s very much, you know, there, but for the grace of God, like you could find yourself in any position.
And I don’t even know, like, I really liked this lady, this imagery. And she, she tries, she tries to communicate with the people below and above. She tries so hard. She tries to incentivize them. Yeah. And the only thing that compels the people below is when, uh, our main guy finally gets fed up with her pleading and says to the people below, if you don’t do this rationing, I will shit on your food.
Todd: Every day. I’ll mix it in with every little piece of it and you will have shit in your food. And that, that works. That compels them. Oh my god, that’s great. She’s like, tell the people up above. And he’s like, well, I can’t shit upwards. Right.
Craig: I actually thought that was a really compelling line! It really
Todd: was.
It tells you all you need to know. No!
Craig: Anyways, I really like her. I don’t know. Eventually the woman comes down and eats her dog. Right. But, sorry, but that lady, you had that coming. That dog wasn’t gonna last in there. Then we find out that the reason that she came in to try to effect change is because she has terminal cancer.
Yeah, and she, you know, like she has lacerations on her skin and stuff that she shows us and then the month ends and they get moved and he wakes up and immediately sees that they are on level two. Oh, two. And she killed herself before he even had time to wake up. She’s like, fuck this. No. And I think she was probably in the right.
Because, oh my God, I don’t know, he just fasts for that
Todd: whole month, doesn’t he? He really does. Yeah, something like that. They, they have
Craig: running water. Yeah. And the truth of the matter is, a human being can survive for a month without food, as long as they have water. It will be miserable. I couldn’t, not me, but somebody, somebody who is in reasonable shape, physical condition could survive for a month.
They had to film this movie chronologically because they had to show his gradual deterioration. He lost like 30 pounds, um, over the course of the movie, but he basically just fast for that month. And then when he wakes up. He’s on level six. And he has a new roommate, this really cool guy named Bharat, who is an idealist.
And I loved
Todd: this character, too. He was a smart guy. I guess he has to be, for his object to be rope. So he’s got it, but he’s also very religious. And you get this feeling that him and maybe people in the upper levels, or could be, or maybe he just thinks they can be persuaded by, you know, appealing to a higher power.
Right. He’s saying to the guys up above, they’re like, why should we help you? And he says, God talked to me and he said that if you guys help me, you know, you’ll, you’ll, you’ll get great things. And the guys upstairs are like, oh, well, if God said that, then… Yeah, maybe we should. Oh, shouldn’t we do that, honey?
Yeah, okay, sure, we will. So he tosses his rope up, and, uh, they hold onto the rope at the top, and he starts climbing the rope. He’s reaching for the ledge, and the woman up there sticks her bare ass out over the edge and shits on his face.
Craig: Yeah. Wow. Uh… Yeah, that’s pretty impressive. Ha ha ha ha ha ha! She was prepped and ready.
I can’t do that either. Yeah.
Todd: I hear it’s easier when you squat, maybe that helped. They’re just, they’re just
Craig: bigoted. Yeah. And, like, they’re so close, like, they’re so close to the top, and this guy has a rope. Like, these people are so blinded by their bigotry that they, and maybe, who knows, maybe they haven’t been there long enough to be concerned about it, but the, the dude has a rope, like, and, and only five stories to go, like, if you could just convince everybody you could climb out of there, potentially, but they’re so blinded by their bigotry that they don’t even care about that, and they’re gross.
They, like, audibly f k up there and stuff. Like, it’s disgusting. But these guys are both idealists now. Um, the main guy and Barra, and the main guy Goring says, you know what we should do? We should, we should just ride the platform down and force. The Rationing. Because if we force it, then they will understand that it can work.
Yeah. And that’s what they do. He convinces them and they write down. And, uh, Bara starts to ration out food to, like, the next level. And, uh, Goring’s like, Nope! These people have eaten for the past several days. We’re gonna wait until we get to level 50. And at level 50… We’ll start handing out the food, and that’s what they do, and of course, you know, they have to be violent sometimes, sometimes they don’t, sometimes people comply.
It’s obviously a risky thing, and it’s an exciting part of the movie, but it seems like their plan is working until, like, I don’t remember, I feel like they have to beat several people, maybe kill some people. But then they get down to one level, where Barat… Runs into a guy that he knows, who was like a mentor to him or something?
What was
Todd: that? That was really shoehorned in there. Yeah, it was just a guy in a wheelchair, and he says, Oh, who is he? And, and Barad says, Oh, he’s a wise man. And he suddenly perks up and listens to this guy. And he says This is
Craig: where things got weird for me. Like, I, I didn’t really understand all of this. I mean, like, I under I understand the narrative.
I understand what’s happening. I just don’t understand. The meaning behind what’s going
Todd: on. I think this is the meaning. Okay, so, um, he basically says, Good manners are important. You can’t be forcing people, but you need to help them. Blah, blah, blah, There’s all this stuff. But then he says, Look, the administration has no conscience.
How are they gonna know up at the top if you’re successful? You know, because… Either way, all of the food is going to be gone when that platform reaches the very, very top. So, uh, they decide they need a delicious, perfectly made dish, a luxury dish, that gets back to level zero, untouched. And he’s like, imagine their faces.
When they see the hole, send a dish back like that. Then, they will get the message. They decide that they’re going to use the, the, uh, Panacotta. The Panacotta. Take care,
Craig: take care of Panacotta as though your life depends on it. It will be the message. Okay, alright.
Todd: Well, I mean, it’s interesting because if you think about this in a classist way, right?
There is, I think, a certain attitude at the top of society that’s like, you know what? No matter what we do for these people, these people below us, the end result is always the same. They’re always going to fritter away the taxes that we give them. They’re going to fritter away the welfare that they have.
You know what I’m saying? And they’re just going to keep asking for more and more and more and more. And, and, uh, it’s their fault, you know? And in this case, if something comes back, it means that they all took as much as they needed and not anymore. And, and, and kind of like upends that whole… Okay. Okay.
That’s how I interpret it, anyway.
Craig: So then, so then the cooks at the top are gonna be like, oh, like, I don’t get it, like.
Todd: Well, there’s always some ambiguity about this as well, because it’s like, what is the, you know, what, what’s the purpose of this thing? You know, what, what’s their goal? You know? But
Craig: I also feel like it’s stupidly optimistic, like.
Yeah. No, nobody’s gonna care. Like, nobody cares. For sure. Send the panna cotta back up. Nobody cares. Well Like,
Todd: so what? Well, you know, I mean, it’s just, uh, it’s sort of the same thing. Like, of course they don’t care. Because we keep seeing these shots of that kitchen, and the guy’s like, got the cooks lined up, and he’s berating them because he found a hair in, I think was the panna cotta, actually.
Uh, and he’s like, yelling at them, and trying to figure out whose hair it is, and, you know, berating them for not having a perfect dish. It’s like, these people are focused on the wrong things. They’re so out of touch with the real problems down below them that they can’t see. And, and you would imagine if this chef got the most exquisite panna cotta returned to him, like, why didn’t anybody eat that?
It would at least give him some pause. I, I guess. And the hope is, it would make him think, maybe I’ve been focused on the wrong thing all along. However, I agree with you. I don’t think that most of us believe that that would… Yeah. Because they’re so in that own, their own world, you know, and they’re, they’re so focused on the wrong thing.
I,
Craig: and, and really it’s kind of been this way through the whole movie, but I feel at this point I really just kind of had to tell myself, just go with it. Like, okay, fine. Fine. It’s not perfect. The panna cotta is important. Whatever. Who cares? Um, so they get, they keep going down and they’re handing out food.
They, they, they try at this, you know, based on the wheelchair guy’s advice, they try To rationalize with people, but if they have to resort to violence, they resort to violence. They eventually get to a really low level. I don’t remember where, but they’re really low and they come to a cell where. Two huge guys are like killing people one of those people.
I think is the woman. Yeah platform woman Yeah, it is goring pulls the huge guy. That’s killing her off And then that guy beats the shit out of him. Yeah and and Bara is Fighting the other guy and I I guess they eventually kill those big guys But the woman is dead,
Todd: right? Yeah, the woman’s dead. So it was a you know that part You know was was a you pointless.
The woman
Craig: is dead They’re both in terrible shape like goring it like is beaten to a bloody pulp and the other guy got Stabbed or slashed or something, right? Yeah, I don’t know Anyway, so but they keep going down and they pass a level 250 Which is what goring it calculated was the lowest level and it just keeps going and going but the platform It doesn’t stop at every level because it doesn’t stop if people are dead and everybody’s dead.
Yeah. Just tons of dead people. But they also pass, like, they just pass a series of randos. Um, and in one, there are two naked men in a… Inflatable baby pool? I, I, I read the, I think those were the screenwriters? That’s hilarious. Oh, no way. That’s what I read, I don’t know if it’s true or not. But they, they stop at level, The, uh, Barat’s like, We still have the panna cotta, the panna cotta’s the message.
But they stop at level 333. Which, you know, three is a magic number, so it makes sense, but I read, I didn’t come up with this on my own, I read this, if there are two people per cell, that means that there are 666 people in this prison, which makes this prison hell itself. Okay, so, they end at level 333, and it stops there because there’s somebody alive.
And it’s a child, the child that I kind of expected that they would eventually find, but it’s a girl. Why, throughout the rest of the movie, were they saying that it was a boy? Because,
Todd: this is all weird, because, uh, Imogiri, because she was in the administration, right, admitting people, she said she admitted that girl.
She said that Yeah, and she’s right. Yeah, the woman, I mean, not the little girl, but the woman who was presumably looking for a son, and she said she didn’t come in with anybody else, they don’t even allow children, they’re very strict on no under 17s in here. She said she wanted to be the next Asian Marilyn Monroe, she came in here hoping to be an actress when she could come out, now she’s just gone crazy killing people searching for her non existent son.
Um, so she just said that was all a, a lie. So that begs the question, was this girl even related to that woman? Now they’re both Asian, uh, Asian looking, and number two, if she isn’t related to that girl, how did a girl, when the, you know, Imogiri claimed that there are no kids allowed in here, how did there get to be a kid in there?
Was that like, born to someone in there?
Craig: Or, And she’s at the very bottom level. And presumably remains there. But I don’t under How does
Todd: she survive? Right, how does she
Craig: survive? Because she doesn’t even look sick. You
Todd: know why? She looks healthy. She’s the Christ figure, I think. In this whole
Craig: thing. I, I, I mean, I get, I think so, like, because then, Goran’s like, she’s hungry, give her the panna cotta, and Barat’s like, but the panna cotta’s the message.
And he’s like, no, she’s the message.
Oh god. And then there’s like, oh, I forgot to mention that throughout all of this, Goran is still hallucinating. All of his previous roommates, so like, uh, Imogury appears to him at this point and says, Ramses II is the message. Well, that was her dog. Then Baharet says, the girl is the message, and then he dies, I guess from his injuries from before.
So, Goring and the girl, she eats the panna cotta, and then they board the platform, and they go down. Level 333 appears to be the final cell, and below that, it just descends into vast… Darkness. Like, it’s crazy! And it goes all the way down, and his first roommate, Chirmagasi, is there, and he says, Your journey is over, my snail.
There’s something about snails that we’re not getting.
Todd: Yeah, I think you’re right. He keeps calling him Little Snail. There was an earlier thing where he found that there were snails uneaten, surprisingly, all the way, you know, halfway. Way far down into the
Craig: Cuz that was his favorite thing, but wait, nobody had touched it.
I mean, who wants to eat snails? Gross. Goring’s like, the girl is the message. And, uh, Trimagasi says to him, but the message doesn’t need a bearer. Yeah. So, Goring gets off the platform and walks away with Trimagasi into the vast darkness. Right. And then, with the little girl asleep on the platform, It shoots like a rocket up through, and that’s it.
Like, we don’t see where it ends, we don’t see what happens. It’s just, it’s over. It’s
Todd: interesting because I saw, like I said, I really feel like the girl, there’s some Catholic imagery throughout this, there’s religious stuff kind of being said. I thought that one of the last images that we saw of Goring, He looked very Christ like, you know, with the light coming down on him and his hair and just sort of very Classically posed as he was looking up at the girl going up.
It just looked straight out of The same image that you see in paintings of the crucifixion work, you know Christ is on the cross and he’s kind of slack jawed But his eyes are looking up toward the light I thought was so pointed that I think it had to be significant But again, I’m not real clear on all the metaphorical stuff in here.
It’s still little Messy for me, and I do wonder if it’s a little mixed. You know? It’s maybe not that perfect. I think, I think, obviously, like, these levels, they have some parallel to the Dante’s levels of hell. Yeah, right. And, uh, when he gets to the bottom, and they’re just in the void, it’s like he’s passed through hell, and he joins the hallucination of the dead guy, and they walk away together into the darkness.
I figure that means that he’s dead. But his death was not without purpose. His death was… But ultimately, and now send without purpose to send the girl up. You know, like he was responsible for getting the panna cotta all the way down to the level where the girl was so he could feed her the panna cotta, realize she’s the message, and then, um, he dies and then sends the girl up to the heavens.
I, you know,
Craig: I’m really perplexed by that line. The message doesn’t need a bearer, right? Like, ah, like I. It seems so significant and I feel like I should be able to connect it to something. And I’m just not really sure. Oh boy. This is a, like, I, I want this to be an interactive episode,
Todd: right? Somebody
Craig: guys, you guys, you guys out there talk to us about this.
Cause like, I’m genuinely curious if we’re missing, like, I don’t, I don’t feel dense about it. Like, I feel like I get it. There are just elements of it that I can’t quite. Put the puzzle pieces together, and, and I’m genuinely curious, I wanna know, so if, if you’re listening, and you have thoughts, please share them with us on one of our various platforms.
Well, there
Todd: have to be, because this was like the most popular Spanish film in Netflix history, and that’s why it’s getting a sequel. Really? Did you know it’s getting a sequel? It’s getting a sequel. They’re done shooting it and, uh, it’s gonna be coming out. I don’t think they’ve released the release date yet, but it, uh, yeah.
I I’m surprised. I am too. This doesn’t seem like the kind of movie that would have a sequel. No. But apparently there’s more to say or more to explain.
Craig: I don’t know. Cube had like two or three sequels that were… Ultimately unnecessary. Like, cause it’s
Todd: kind of the same movie. But that movie was kind of schlocky and didn’t…
I mean, that movie was, uh… It
Craig: was more of a comment… Well, I mean, this is too, I suppose. It was kind of a commentary on human nature. It was. Whatever. But, no, I can’t imagine what they would do with a sequel. It seems like kind of
Todd: a… I don’t know. What happens to the girl when she gets to the top and how they deal with that?
Maybe they change the thing? Right?
Craig: Is it… Are there these prisons? Like, are there more of them? Like, is it a whole deal? Like, I, I don’t even know. It, there’s a, I, Alan and I watched a show, I don’t remember what it was on, one of the streaming services. We watched this show called Silo. Have you ever heard of this?
And it’s like this society that lives all within this gigantic silo. They can’t go outside. Because it’s like nuclear wasteland
Todd: outside. But do they have to send people outside to like clean the lens or something like that? Yes. Oh, this is based on a real popular series of web novels called Wool. Oh yeah, uh huh.
Did they make that
Craig: into a movie? No, it’s a television series. They did, uh, there’s only one season, but Alan and I watched it. Yeah. Anyway, it reminds me of this. Yeah. Rando. Anyway, but like, I liked this movie. I really did. I was, like, I feel like on paper, I would think that it was going to be really slow and tedious, but it’s not.
I was, I was engaged the whole time. I was, I think that it’s really well acted. I was really invested in, in the characters and I wanted to know how it was going to, Turn out. Yeah, even though the ending is Ambiguous it didn’t feel unsatisfying like a satisfying end To the story and yeah, I I would recommend I I would 100 percent recommend this movie.
It’s good It’s well made it’s well acted. It’s interesting I don’t really have any
Todd: complaints. I think it’s gonna be a love it or you hate it kind of movie. I think some people are really into this. They, and like you said, it’s a little bit better than just a simple, like, very pretentious, artsy, metaphorical movie that you kinda after a while are rolling your eyes at because you know that I’m not even supposed to understand this.
No, like, you’re supposed to understand this and Yeah. Like have to be stupid not to really. Even though there’s some ambiguity that leaves a lot of things up to interpretation. That’s not so maddening. Yeah. Um, because what’s happening is compelling, and also, you know, you kind of wanted to provide some answers.
I think the whole time I’m going through this movie, like, How are they gonna solve this? Then we can apply that to our real our lives, you know? Like, like, have they cracked the code and figured out how this is all supposed to work? But they haven’t. Or maybe they have. I don’t know.
Craig: Well, that’s why I said that a more definitive…
Ending, I think, would have come across as trite, because you can’t just magically solve these issues. Yes. So, to suggest that, I don’t know, maybe they are suggesting that by some miracle, you can. But that’s in the fantasy world of the movie. Is it? So, I, I, I think that it’s smart to end it where it ends.
Todd: This just came to me. If they’re not expecting a child because they have a, the administration has a strong, uh, complete, no under 17, or no under 17 people allowed in here, the presence of a child would shock them. And then it would make them question, number one, how did that child get there? And number two, how did that child survive to the point where…
She could be sent from the bottom all the way to the top and that might cause them to Seriously retool their thinking about the humanity and the the way that society that that society down below them works And their hope for it Or their lack of
Craig: hope for it. I don’t know. I think it’s meant to be, like, messianic.
But…
Todd: Yeah, because this child should be dead. Right. And this brutality of the lower levels, especially down here, like, this child would not survive. And the fact that she did would… Yeah, messianic, of course.
Craig: And that’s, like, that’s a very… Quaint story to record in the Bible, but like, that’s not like, no, nobody’s going to care.
Like in the real world, in real life, she could be literal Jesus and the
Todd: people at the top wouldn’t care. No, that’s true. That’s very true. Maybe that’s what the sequel is going to show us. Maybe. Oh boy. Well, this was a fun movie to talk about. Thank you so much, Craig, for recommending it. You’re welcome. And thank you to all of you for listening, and I, I second what Craig said earlier.
We would really love for this to spark some discussion because we feel, as we’ve said in here, that there are a number of things that we are maybe just too stupid to pick up on. Please, um, enlighten us. Let us know what we’re missing. It would be lovely to, uh, have those conversations with you guys. And appreciate this movie even more.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with a friend. Uh, if you would like to get in more deep conversations with us, we have a lot of back and forth with our patrons. If you just go to patreon. com slash chainsaw podcast, uh, consider joining and supporting our podcast. You can get a lot of behind the scenes chatter with us.
Sort of a direct line, as well as, uh, influence the episodes by choosing which movies we’re going to do. And, uh, we do a lot of minisodes up there as well, where we reveal a little bit more about our lives and things we’re reading and just random stuff that our patrons want to
Craig: hear. I’m having a lot of fun on the Patreon page.
Todd: Me too. Chatting it up, making friends. Come on over. We all float down here. Until next time, I’m Todd. And I’m Craig. With Two Guys and a Chainsaw.
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