Warning: Contains some spoilers
“New Order” (Nuevo Orden), a near-future dystopia by Mexican director Michel Franco, is a full-frontal assault on the senses. I saw it in the theater when it debuted in Mexico City last October. As the end credits rolled across the black screen, with no background music to soften the blow, I realized that my arms were hovering above the arm rests, every muscle in my body tense.
While the story itself is fictional, the gruesome horror it depicts is very real: the nightmare of a military coup. As anyone familiar with Latin American history knows, this story has played out far too many times over the past century.
The film begins at the expansive mansion of an elite Mexico City family, preparing to celebrate the wedding of Marianne (Naian González Norvind). The family lives in those opulent outer neighborhoods of Mexico City that seem immune even to the earthquakes that frequently beset this city.
The first act is a slow burn that artfully builds tension. The film develops characters and takes its time getting to the horror, with a patience that the horror genre itself often lacks. We watch the affluent wedding guests drinking, hugging, and laughing, oblivious to the world outside. Until that world breaches the perimeter.
Protesters suddenly appear on the walls of the mansion. Unrest has erupted across the nation, devolving into looting and riots. The protesters draw firearms and ransack the mansion, as similar scenes unfold across the city. And that’s just the beginning.
The turmoil provides the military with the perfect pretext to take over. Tanks roll down the streets, the uprising is crushed, and Mexico becomes a military dictatorship. That’s where the violence and horror really begin.
Curfews, roadblocks and checkpoints become the norm. Summary executions are ubiquitous. Capital punishment returns, a medieval measure that has been outlawed in Mexico since 1929.
The scenes of brutality and violence are extremely realistic, augmented by handheld cameras and natural delivery of dialogue. Although New Order lays no claims to the “found footage” genre, it has the gritty texture of a documentary. At times, it even feels like a snuff film. Once the tension breaks and the wedding party is disrupted, violence and cruelty relentlessly build to the gut-wrenching conclusion.
During the second and third acts, the focus shifts to the working-class characters employed by Marianne’s family. Their neighborhood has been walled off as a de facto ghetto, subjected to draconian curfews. A short time is allotted for people to buy groceries, even as most people are unable to return to work.
The protagonists are some of the lucky few allowed to leave the ghetto and work for their employers (who now live in a much more modest dwelling). Every day, they must pass through a series of humiliating checkpoints and searches. As they board a bus to the rich neighborhood, they are sprayed down with disinfectant. A disembodied voice on the bus’s loudspeakers announces, “There is no need to cover your mouth.” The scene evokes images of the US border, a gauntlet of inspections for travelers who still recall the degrading sanitization baths imposed on people in the early 20th century.
These scenes also contain shades of our recent pandemic restrictions. To be sure, “New Order” is not a direct metaphor for the COVID lockdown, in the vein of the US film “Songbird” (2020). However, the influences are easy to see. The working poor in Franco’s world are stuck between a rock and a hard place, a situation that millions of working-class people can relate to: stuck at home, not allowed to go to work, but still forced to pay rent and buy groceries.
It is worth mentioning that many critics in Mexico interpreted this film as preaching a right-wing agenda. Some saw it as a dire warning to protesters: “This is what will happen if you keep taking to the streets.” Nicolás Ruiz described it as “a spectacular dystopia that uses fear and violence to push a conservative message against social protest.”
With all due respect, I disagree. The early protest scenes are merely the detonant that sets off the true horror of a dictatorship, and the bulk of the film shows us how nobody wins in this scenario, rich or poor. When the military takes over a country, life is hell for everyone but the military.
Shortly after the coup, a group of soldiers kidnap Marianne and hold her for ransom, along with hundreds of other wealthy victims. The horrifying scenes of torture and rape reflect the real-life testimonies of kidnapping victims. In the world of Franco’s dystopia, however, there is an additional layer of horror: What if the kidnappers were not criminals, but those running the country?
Of course, this depiction of egalitarian oppression doesn’t exactly reflect all historical dictatorships. When the military took over in Chile and other Latin American nations, many rich families did just fine. (As long as they weren’t involved in leftist politics.) And yet, “New Order” transcends history, presenting a fictional composite image of the politics of violence, a brutal world of cruelty and impunity.
Considering the rise of authoritarian governments around the world, it is terrifyingly poignant.
David J. Schmidt is an author, podcaster, multilingual translator, and homebrewer who splits his time between Mexico City and San Diego, California. He is a proponent of fair trade, has published books, essays, short stories, and articles in English and Spanish, and is co-host of the podcast To Russia with Love. See holyghoststories.dotcom or Twitter: @SchmidtTales.
From The Progressive Populist, September 15, 2021
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