Science Fiction"Hunger Station" Movie Comment ary Copy
Recently, a sci-fi thriller from Spain "came out of the circle"
The Hunger Station
Don't look at the low cost of this film
But it relies on a strange high concept, thick atmosphere, upside down script
that makes it more shocking than many of the big Hollywood sci-fi movies
More shocking
It's been a long time since I've seen
A movie like this can be described as "fierce"
The story takes place in the near future
A mysterious "vertical body" prison houses a variety of prisoners
And a few ordinary people who volunteer to join
There is no sky above and no ground under your feet.
You can only see the endless layers of the prison
This is nothing, what is more frightening is the rules here
At the beginning of the movie, we see the top kitchen of the prison
Every cook inside is working hard
A sumptuous feast is in full swing
The voice-over follows: There are three kinds of people in the world
The upper class, the lower class, and the degenerate
The main character, Abi, woke up from bed in a daze
Suddenly I saw a 48 written on the wall
This represents the floor of their prison, the 48th floor
His roommate, Old Bill, is a long-time resident of this place and has a deep understanding of how to survive in prison
The newcomer wanted to shake hands as a gesture of friendship.
But Old Bill turned him down and told him to go back to his side of the hall.
He told Abi that he was lucky to be on the 48th floor on his first visit
Because the rules of this prison are
Their daily food starts from the 1st floor
It was placed on a floating slab of stone
It's like a train that stops at each platform regularly for a few minutes
Their food is the leftovers from the 47th floor
And the 47th floor eats the leftovers from the previous floor, and so on
And every month the floor they were on would change randomly
After telling Abbey this
Today's food also arrived at their floor
The old man took out a pillow and put it in front of him, knelt down and began to gobble it up
While Abi, who had just entered the prison, looked disgusted
He refused to eat the leftovers that had been spoiled by 94 people in front of him
After further consideration, he only took an apple that was still clean and intact
However, at that moment, the temperature in the room began to rise rapidly
It turns out that the second rule is
Only when the platform stays on their floor
The food belongs to them and cannot be left on their own floor
Otherwise, the temperature will rise or fall rapidly until the person dies of heat or freezing
The shocked Abi could only quickly throw away the apples in their hands
Everyone who enters this prison is allowed to bring a personal item
But they didn't know the real situation inside the prison until they entered it.
So they brought all sorts of things with them.
Abi told his roommate that the personal item he brought was a book, Don Quixote.
And that he came to this prison voluntarily to quit smoking.
The roommate also told Abbey his reason for coming in.
He bought a kitchen knife because he trusted the TV shopping.
When he found out he was cheated, he got angry and threw the TV out of the window
As a result, he was sent to prison and the item he brought in was the knife he bought.
The next day even though Abi was hungry
But he still kept his dignity as a civilized man
He refused to eat what could be called "garbage".
After hearing the old man say that there were at least hundreds of floors here
Abi naively wanted everyone on the upper and lower levels to listen to him
Reduce the diet and rationing, so that it is fair to all
However, the old man laughed at his idea
and warned him to stop being so fanciful, it was all a waste of effort
The people at the top don't care about the people at the bottom.
Thank goodness they don't shit on your food.
On the third day, Abi compromised and began to adapt to the life he was living.
Abi asked his roommate how many floors he had been to before.
He said he had been to the 132nd floor
There was nothing to eat when he reached the platform
Then Abi is very confused, no food can not last a month ah
How did the roommate survive until now?
In this regard, the old must answer is, food can not get there
But it does not mean that I do not eat
Apparently, before Abi went to prison
The old man had survived by eating his roommate many times
At this time the platform arrived and there was a woman on the table, according to Old Bill
She would come down on the platform every month to look for her child
And before that, she would kill her roommate
In anticipation of the next roommate rotation, she would be able to change to her own child
The kind-hearted Abi wanted to help the woman
But after witnessing the two people on the next floor being killed by her in a few blows
then dismissed the idea, it seems that this woman does not need help
She's not to be trifled with either.
After adjusting to prison life, Abi's days flew by.
After a month, he was getting along quite well with the old man.
Of course this is under the premise of sufficient food
Today, the day of the floor change, the whole prison was filled with anesthetic gas
Before he passed out, he said he had two months to serve.
If he survived these two months, he would be able to get out.
He then asks Abi to pray with him that they can get a good floor.
After saying that, he fell into a coma.
However, when Abhi opened his eyes in a daze
He found himself tied up
That's when Old Bill appeared at his side with a knife
(This is not a good floor, do you understand?)
(You're younger and stronger than I am)
（"You may not attack me today or tomorrow)
（But with the passage of time)
（"Hunger makes people crazy)
（In this case, it's eat or be eaten)
（"Obviously, I don't want to kill you now)
（Your flesh will rot quickly)
（Then we won't have any food)
This time, they were transferred to the 171st floor.
No food can be brought down here.
If they want to survive, they have to do whatever they can.
The wise roommate tied up Abi in advance.
And said that after eight days, when his body is clean
Then he would start eating his flesh little by little
Eight days went by, and in the past few days the platform was licked clean.
Even the dishes were licked clean
They rely on drinking water to survive until today
And today is also the day that old Bie decided to do it
At this point in time, Abi's heart has turned from despair to numbness
And just as his roommate was cutting off a piece of flesh from his thigh
The woman who was looking for the child happened to come down on the platform
She killed the roommate in seconds, even though he was dead for sure.
After the rescue, Abi still dragged his frail body in anger
Crawled over and stabbed his roommate several times until he was exhausted before stopping
At that moment, the movie camera suddenly went to the kitchen on the top floor
The head chef is holding a custard in his hand
Angrily questioning whose hair fell in it
causing the food to be sent back, which seems inexplicable here
In fact, we will not know the meaning until the end of the movie
Back on Abi's side, he spent the month eating his roommate's flesh
He is living on the flesh of his roommate and the maggots he grows, unconsciously going into schizophrenia
In his mind, he can see his roommate's spirit talking to him.
Let's go.
（"Let's go)
（"No, I'll never leave)
（"I belong to you now, I'm inside you)
（"But you belong to me too)
After another exchange, Abi returns to the upper level
On the 33rd floor, his roommate becomes a woman who seems to be of good birth
She brought a pet dog into the prison.
After questioning her, he learns that she was a staff member of the prison.
She was responsible for recruiting and interviewing people like Abi.
She told Abbey that she was working at this institution
She told Abi that she had worked for 25 years in this institution, which is called the Vertical Self-Management Center.
There are about 200 floors here.
If everyone is disciplined, there's enough food for everyone at the bottom.
In her eyes, this institution will eventually lead to spontaneous solidarity
That is, each person can control the amount of food he or she eats
to ensure that everyone can survive no matter what position they are assigned to
Therefore, she divided the food into two portions every day
and urged those on the next level to follow her lead and divide the food equally
And she also set an example by taking turns eating food with her pet dog
She ate one meal every two days
When Abbey questioned the presence of children here, the roommate made it clear that
There is no one under the age of 16 here
The roommate advised the lower level day after day, but to little avail.
Unable to stand up to this, Abbey came out with a verbal tirade
(Listen up, you piece of shit)
(Do as the lady says)
（"Or I'll shit on your food every day)
（"And I'll smear it on every grain of rice.)
（Do you understand me?)
（You'll have to eat shit every day)
(Pass the command to the lower level, do you understand?)
At this point, the woman looking for the child appeared once again
But this time she was bruised and battered and passed out on the food platform.
The two men rescued her from the platform.
She ended up eating her roommate's pet dog alive at night
The roommate went crazy, cursing and beating the woman
But that didn't bring her dog back to life
After sending the woman away, she told Abi
The woman had interviewed herself 10 months ago.
She was the only one who came in. She was an actress.
The goal was to become a star, and she didn't have any children.
After the pet dog was killed, the roommate seemed to have lost her soul
The last day of food for the month arrived
Yet the woman refused to eat the food
Because this day it was her pet dog's turn to eat
Once again the floors are swapped and Abi wakes up to the 202nd floor in big letters
It turns out there are more than 200 floors in the prison.
Unable to accept this, his roommate hangs himself.
Abi's mind is splitting again.
In his mind, the two dead people were talking to him
(Won't you put her down?)
(She was your friend)
(Will you eat her?)
(Of course, that's why I hung myself up)
(Otherwise I might have jumped)
(Like a lot of people)
（"But I wanted to leave you a gift)
（"My corpse)
（"Please, eat my corpse)
(Digest it and excrete it in a bullshit atonement)
At first, by drinking water and eating books, Abi lasted a long time
But finally he couldn't take it anymore and did it to the woman
That's how he survived the months
When the exchange again, Abi to the 6th floor
This time, his roommate was a black guy with a rope on his back and a mouth full of faith.
He wanted to climb up and escape from this hell on earth.
The guys on the 5th floor pretend to help him
But just as he was about to climb up
The man on the 5th floor did not pull him
Instead, he pulled a piece of crap on his face
Luckily, Abi grabbed him in time, otherwise he would have been dropped to death.
After the two unpleasant experiences he had experienced before
He decided to do something to change all that.
That night, Abbey talked to the black guy, and after his rough calculations
There should be 250 floors here.
He wanted to distribute the food on each floor in equal amounts.
The next day, they dismantled the beds and took the sticks off the bed boards
They set out on a journey to distribute the food
When they encountered disobedient ones, they resorted to repression
Midway through the descent, they encountered a wise man
The wise man inspired them that before resorting to violence
It is best to communicate through benign communication first, the Authority has no conscience
But the only hope is that
The staff in the kitchen might have a conscience.
So they need to be given a "message" to ask for help
And that requires a dish to be presented unscathed, perfectly
So that they could receive the message
So, the jelly became the object of the two men's desperate protection
From the 51st floor, the two distributed food
The faces of all the people on each floor were also laid out before them
The further they went down, the more vicious people there were.
They were forced to fight for their lives for a mouthful of food
On the way, they met the woman who was looking for her child.
But this time, unfortunately, she had been killed by two strong men
The two of them were also seriously injured and on the verge of death during the difficult fight
After a lot of trouble, Abi and the black guy
finally stopped at the 333rd floor, which should be the bottom floor
They found a little girl here
And the platform still didn't stop but continued to go down
The black guy took the milk jelly and didn't put it back on the platform
But the strange thing is that the air temperature did not change
Perhaps the "message" could be not the custard, but the little girl
The kind duo gave the little girl the milk jelly and ate it
That night, the black boy died of blood loss
The next day, Abbey and the little girl rode the platform into the bottom of the pit.
Abi was in a hallucination in the pit and saw her first roommate
He told Abi to get off the platform, leaving only the little girl to go up
And as the little girl flies to the top as a "message"
And that's where the film comes to an abrupt end
The Hunger Station is a typical "high concept" thriller
It has a small but big setup
This vertical prison in the film
The vertical prison in the film is reminiscent of the short films "The Next Level" and
Parasite" director Bong Joon-ho's previous film "Snow Country Train
I have explained these films. If you are interested, you can go back and look at them
They both use class as a metaphor
In a building, they discuss the social differences brought about by class
Class privilege, class conflict, and other topics
What do we mean by class society?
Simply put, as the gap between the rich and the poor increases
There is a clear division of social classes
The people have formed a strict class division
Just like the people in the first 50 layers of the film
They can eat almost all of the food
And the rest of the class can only eat some of the margins or find another way
This corresponds to the reality of the two-eight principle
It means that 80% of the wealth in society
is actually in the hands of 20% of the people
In fact, just by reading the plot introduction, we can generally understand
The director wants to say that there are several kinds of people, those who control the whole situation
The upper class people who eat and drink, the middle class people who eat the scraps of food
And the lower class who have nothing but to kill each other
In the real world, the distinction between classes is relatively solid
The rich and the poor are not only different from each other in economic and material terms
There is also the gap between children's education and social status
All these make the class tend to be fixed and immobile
We ordinary people want to change our social status completely
is a very difficult thing to do
Many people at the bottom may not be able to cross the gap between the rich and the poor even if they try harder
Day after day, generation after generation, forming an eternal cycle
The rich enjoy the abundant material resources
The poor can only watch them enjoy their pleasures
In the film, this solidarity between classes
is somehow shattered
One month, people at the top of the hierarchy
The next month, they may be at the end of their rope.
Ideally, a win-win partnership
In an ideal world, cooperation would ensure that every level of the prison population would be fed.
But "human nature is evil," and most people are criminals.
Only a very few like Abbey join voluntarily
So a win-win situation is impossible to achieve
Not to mention, the ideal doesn't exist.
A table of food cooked by the top chef cannot be eaten by 666 people
So there is not enough food to share anyway
It takes everyone starving to keep everyone alive
This makes the possibility of "spontaneous solidarity" of the inmates almost zero
The director takes this obvious social rule
into an extreme social experiment
and then filmed it in a way that is the "iceberg principle"
Let the audience follow the male protagonist who knows nothing at first
It's like a kind of "breaking and entering" process.
So it continues to capture our curiosity
We can't help but be attracted by these cruel and bloody scenes
And feel scared for it
As the director's debut film
This film has a lot of thoughtful and unbelievable places
It's amazing that a first-time film of this caliber can be made.
It is because of the iceberg principle of narrative strategy
The film leaves a lot of mysteries unexplained
The screenwriter did not try to explain himself, but left the questions to the audience
The biggest mystery of all is the child who appears at the end of the film
In the middle of the movie, the second roommate tells Abi
There is no child in prison
The woman who is looking for the child is a crazy person who imagines she has a child
According to the information in the film, the evidence that this little girl
There are five pieces of evidence that prove that this little girl is purely a fantasy of the male lead.
First, the temperature of the floor did not change after they left the milk jelly
Second, before the head chef held a
hair and was sent back to the custard was furious
Third, a little girl could not have survived here
If it really existed, it would have been eaten
Fourth, Abi's second roommate, the staff in charge of recruitment said
The woman who was looking for the baby came in alone 10 months ago
And even if she was pregnant in advance, the child could not have suddenly grown so large
Fifth, the man had previously experienced two painful ordeals
I often have hallucinations, so the possibility that the little girl was hallucinating is high
The book that the man brought into the prison was Don Quixote
It's the sixth piece of evidence hidden.
Abbey was going to read this book for six months.
It's a classic work by the Spanish writer Cervantes.
It depicts the fallen nobleman Don Quixote as obsessed with ancient knightly fiction.
Like an ancient knight with armor and horses.
Travels the country three times with an entourage of attendants
Creating a tale of helping the weak and the strong in a beautiful society
But it's all really a fantasy.
Don Quixote would even imagine the windmill as a giant to defeat
In the end, he was badly wounded and sent home as a madman
In fact, Abbey symbolizes Don Quixote
Seemingly good and rational
In fact, it is on the verge of collapse after a long period of torture and struggle
Much of what we see before us is an illusion
So much so that in the end, he imagines this little girl who doesn't exist
Hoping that the next generation will change the system
But this good wish is just an illusion
The deepest pit at the bottom is probably where the bodies are disposed of in this prison
In the end, Abi stays in this mess forever
He changed nothing
Of course, it's possible that this little girl really exists
After all, prison administrators have been lied to.
For example, the prison has 333 floors instead of 200
The second cellmate was lied to by the organization
But it has to be said, assuming the little girl is real.
The ending also falls into the cliché of a successful rescue
It also contradicts the moral of "Don Quixote" to a large extent
The former ending is the better answer, no matter how you look at it
That's the end of the story for today
I'm XXX, a narrator dedicated to bringing movies to life. See you next time.
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