Anna Daniels
At the end of the film, we learn that Miharu’s child is real, and has been living at the very bottom of the pit. Goreng arrives there after riding the platform down with a weapon, enforcing the rationing of the food by beating and killing anyone who tries to take more than their share. His plan is to return back to the top level with an uneaten dessert, a symbol that the prisoners have learned how to work together to survive in such a way.
However, after finding the child, Goreng realizes that that isn’t the message he needs to send. The discovery of Miharu’s child is confirmation of the most important component of the VSC experiment: those in power set the rules, but they clearly don’t follow them themselves. Although they’ve assured everyone they would never do something as cruel as allow a child into such a horrendous existence, that was a lie.
The conclusion of The Platform sees Goreng sending the child back up on the platform as a message to the chefs at the top, who are presumably in a similar state of ignorance as Imoguiri. Instead of proving to them that the prisoners can adapt to the system, he wants to show them that the system itself is unspeakably and unfathomably cruel, and those operating it cannot be trusted.
Written by: Looper
