"The Well" by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia: the dystopia of a contemporary panopticon

Abstract

Beyond to focusing on class struggle - in an organic and extremely violent way - The well (2019), directed by the Spanish Basque Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, is a film whose protagonist looks like a medieval hero. In order to feed equally the prisoners of the 333 floors from a vertical prison, Goreng, played by Iván Massagué, is the plot martyr, sacrificing himself on behalf of “common good”, even if it costs other lives. Full of intertextualities with literary classics, such as Don Quixote and The divine comedy, the movie takes place in this claustrophobic territory of liberty privation. The purpose of this review is to analyze the narrative from the perspective of Michel Foucault, for whom the current prison system, although it has erased the pleaded, quartered, amputated body, in its most explicit devices, still applies certain measures of physical suffering. In the film, watching and punishing - as proposed by the structure of the panopticon - is also a reflection of power relations, not only between an invisible administration that prepares feasts that never reach the last floors, as in the handling between the pairs that share the lockups and among those on the upper and lower platforms.