14 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES Tuesday 7 April 2020

ARTS

Table service: in ‘The Platform’ some prisoners are well fed while those on

lower levels must fight over scraps

W

hen I met Spanish film-

maker Galder Gaztelu-

Urrutia at the Macau

International Film Fes-

tival in December, the

world was a different place. An hour’s

ferry ride across the water, a crackdown

on mass demonstrations in Hong Kong

was under way, and the UK and Europe

were still convulsed with conflict over

Brexit. However, neither of us could

have guessed how the nightmare vision

of his debut featureThe Platform

would take on such pointed relevance

when it hit Netflix during the coronavi-

rusoutbreak.

Inthefilm,ayoungmanGoreng(Iván

Massagué) awakes to find himself on

the 47th level of a vertical prison. Each

cell has a hole in the floor and every day

a food platform is lowered. The inmate

on each successive level eats what they

can before the table moves on, so the

higher levels gorge themselves before

the lower levels scrabble for leftovers.

At first Goreng is incredulous and hopes

for civility, but as each month he finds

himself positioned at a different ran-

dom level, barbarity and even cannibal-

ismsoonbecomethenorm.

The intended political message is all

too clear, as the director confirms. “The

biggest problem we have today is the

sharing of wealth,” Gaztelu-Urrutia

says. “It’s a problem we’ve had for 500

years. And it is a problem we will have

500 years in the future. It is not a film

against one political or economic

system, but more about the behaviour

of individuals within that world. The

movieisnotouttochangetheworld,but

to change how you behave as an individ-

ual.Ifyouwereinthisworld,howwould

youbehave?Whatwouldyoudoonlevel

6? Or what would you do if you were on

level200?”

This great “what if” of the film feels

far less abstract today than when we

met. I am in northern Italy, having lived

in lockdown for weeks while Gaztelu-

UrrutiainSpainislikewisesecluded.On

the news, we see different reactions to

the crisis: from the panic buying of pro-

visions to singing from the balconies,

andThe Platform’s portrayal of confine-

mentfeelsveryclosetohome.

The food in the film begins as a sump-

tuous feast, worthy of a Flemish still life

or aMasterCheffinal. “We wanted to

make an idealisation of the food,” the

director says. “We wanted to show

decadent opulence. It is completely dif-

ferent from the rest of the prison, which

is grey and geometric and inhuman.

The food is the opposite. The food is the

onlythingthathascolourinthemovie.”

That, and the blood that begins to

flow. But although the film has grue-

some similarities with high-concept

horror films such asSawandThe Cube,

Gaztelu-Urrutia looked closer to home

for his chief inspiration,The Exterminat-

ing Angel. In Buñuel’s 1962 surrealist

masterpiece, a dinner party becomes an

endless ordeal when the guests discover

they are unable to leave. The sense of

isolation and social distance is all too

potent in both films. It also sets up a test

of values that resembles the ethical

issues surrounding panic-buying.

Goreng works out that if everyone takes

only their fair share, there will be

enough food to reach the lowest levels.

Hismissiontoenforcehisschemecomes

toresembleagoryQuixoticcrusade.

Yetforallitsbrutalitythefilmendson

a note that is not entirely bleak. “You go

down, down, down and there’s no hope,

so we had to show some hope at the

end,” Gaztelu-Urrutia tells me. “But the

most important thing is not to change

the world but to change yourself. That is

the real victory of the movie.” It is a

lessonwearenowlearninginreality.

‘The Platform’ is available on Netflix now

Prison horror gains a grim resonance

John Bleasdale meets the

maker of a Netflix film whose

themes of confinement and

food scarcity are now closer to

home than he anticipated

about assisted suicide, women’s rights

and social hypocrisy. Performed with

crisp self-awareness by a cast including

David Horovitch and Francesca

Annis, Emma Harding’s production is

ripebutenjoyable.

The Shadow of a Doubtwas first broad-

cast in Radio 3’s Sunday evening drama

slot—agoodplacetolookforsomething

meaty. It includes classic plays revived

with eye-catching casts (Patsy Ferran

inThe Glass Menagerie, for example),

significant world premieres (such as

Christopher Eccleston inSchreber, a

never-produced screenplay by Anthony

Burgess based on a seminal memoir

about mental illness), recent plays you

may have missed in the theatre (such as

Lucy Prebble’s The Effect)or substantial

newwork.

One such isThe Likes of Usby Roy

Williams (who co-wroteDeath of Eng-

land, recently given a blazing perform-

ance by Rafe Spall at the National Thea-

tre).The Likes of Us(BBC Radio 3 and

Sounds) draws on the playwright’s per-

sonal family history to explore recent

topicalissuessuchastheGrenfellTower

fire, the Windrush scandal and the per-

sistent scourge of racism. But it demon-

strates too his experience as a radio

playwright. Williams also scriptsThe

Interrogation, a regular series of 45-

minutedetectiveprogrammesforRadio

4’sdailydramaslot,andThe Likes of Usis

asimilarlytightlyplottedfamilystoryin

which two bereaved adult children dis-

cover a surprising secret in their

mother’s papers. Her voice (Doreene

Blackstock), heard by us but not by

them (the sort of thing you can do so

well on radio), urges them on from

beyondthegrave.

That ability to take the audience into

a character’s confidence plays a big role

too inThis Thing of Darkness(BBC

Radio 4 and Sounds). A murder drama

with a difference, it balances narrative

with reflection. The tense unfolding

story is interspersed with patient expla-

nations from forensic psychiatrist Dr

Alex Bridges (played by Lolita Chakra-

barti), whose job is to unearth the psy-

chological forces at play, both before

and after the murder. Written by Anita

Vettesse, in consultation with forensic

psychiatrist Dr Gwen Adshead, it plays

out in seven 45-minute episodes, keep-

ing a taut balance between gripping

whodunnit and a more meditative

A

short radio drama brought

swathsoftheUKtoastand-

still.Spoonface Steinberg, by

Lee (Billy Elliot) Hall, was

theinternalmonologueofa

seven-year-old girl fighting cancer:

funny, salty, immensely moving, it had

car drivers pulling over into lay-bys and

listenersweepingintheirkitchens.

It was an example of what radio

drama, at its best, can do: there’s a

particular intimacy in listening in to a

character’s thoughts with just their

wordsandyourimaginationtobuildon.

And radio drama, often seen as the less

glamorous relation of all its screen cous-

ins, has experienced an upswing

recently as the growing popularity of

podcastsandradioappshasbothbroad-

ened access and raised the bar. The

audio equivalents of box-sets — mam-

moth all-day broadcasts of classics —

have allowed audiences to soak them-

selvesinstory.Meanwhile,moresophis-

ticated technology means radio drama

can play to its strength — the dramatic

potential of sound — and use texture

and binaural recording to plunge you

deeperintotheaction.

And with live drama onstage brought

to a halt by the global pandemic, radio is

springing into action. Stephen Fry, Rus-

sell Tovey and Sheila Atim are among

those recording a new fundraising

drama for the theatre industry. Pro-

duced by Huddersfield’s Lawrence Bat-

ley Theatre, this adaptation of David

Nicholls’ novelThe Understudywill be

recorded by the actors in isolation and

broadcast online on May 20 and 27.

Meanwhile BBC Radio 3 is rescuing

David Greig’sAdventures with the Painted

People, originally destined for the stage

andnowheadingfortheairwaves.

As we wait for them, and for live

theatre to return, now is a chance to dip

into what audio drama is already out

there. There are plentiful independent

podcasts, to which we will return, but

let’s begin with a glance at some of the

BBC’s output. You could try, for

instance,The Shadow of a Doubt,arare

dramatic outing from novelist Edith

Wharton (BBC R3 and Sounds). In an

ironic twist, given that so many play-

wrights have just seen their work

upended,Wharton’sdramawassettobe

performedin1901,butnevermadeiton

to the stage. It finally had its world pre-

miere, more than a century later, on the

radio, after two sleuth-like academics

(Laura Rattray and Mary Chinery)

uneartheditinanarchive.

Tracing a wealthy family’s starchy

response to their son’s choice of second

wife, it’s a guilty pleasure: a melo-

dramatic tale of social snobbery and

hypocrisy, peppered with waspish

Wharton one-liners. Beginning in Oscar

Wildeterritory,itsuddenlyswervesinto

something closer to Ibsen. And beneath

the brittle surface lie serious debates

A new wave of radio drama

With live theatre on hold,

playwrights and directors are

finding fresh ways to realise

the dramatic potential of

sound. By Sarah Hemming

inquiry into why violence happens.

It’s that flexibility that often attracts

both writers and listeners: you can shift

country, focus or time period instantly

in radio drama. No mind-boggling loca-

tion and special effects budget needed,

evenforJamesBond,astherecentadap-

tation ofThe Man with the Golden Gun

(BBC Radio 4 and Sounds) demon-

strates. With Toby Stephens swash-

buckling around the globe as 007 and

Martin Jarvis interjecting as the voice of

Ian Fleming (not to mention Janie Dee

as Moneypenny), this is a highly enter-

taining, ever-so-slightly tongue-in-

cheek dramatisation of the 1964 cold

war thriller, which stick more closely to

the original novel than does the film.

The politics — and gender politics — are

straight from the Sixties, but the semi-

serious tone of the piece lets them get

awaywithit.

An altogether more contemporary

and texturally ambitious thriller comes

in the shape ofForest 404, an innova-

tive, interactive, wraparound sci-fi eco-

drama from the BBC, written by Timo-

thy X Atack. Already an award-winning

podcast, available on Sounds, it is set to

bebroadcastonBBCRadio4soon.

Setinthe24thcentury,itfollowswhat

happens to Pan (Pearl Mackie), a young

archivist tasked with destroying linger-

ing data from the time before the “cata-

clysm”. As she works her way through

snatches of music and speeches leftover

from the 21st century, she stumbles on a

recording that haunts her. It is of a rain-

forest — something that in her time no

longer exists — and, captivated, she

determines to discover what happened

totheearth’sforests.

An audio play that in part reflects on

sound as a repository of memory,Forest

404 can be a little earnest at times, but

what makes it is the richly textured

soundscape, which is mixed using bin-

auraltechnologytohelpimmerseyouin

the story. Each episode is accompanied

by a talk on the questions raised and

also by a five-minute wordless sound-

scape (created by sound designer Gra-

ham Wild and producer Becky Ripley).

Listenedtoonheadphonestheseplunge

you right into the middle of a Sumatran

rainforest, a frog chorus or a soothing

woodland walk with birdsong and the

distant bleat of sheep. That alone is a

sweettreatforanyoneonlockdown.

bbc.co.uk

understudyplay.com

Sophisticated technology

means radio drama can

use texture and binaural

recording to plunge you

deeper into the action

Recording of ‘Schreber’ by Anthony Burgess, with Christopher Ecclestone

APRIL 7 2020 Section:Features Time: 6/4/2020 - 18: 49 User: peter.bailey Page Name: ARTS LON, Part,Page,Edition: EUR, 14 , 1