New Order Nuevo Orden Movie Deconstruction. Let me put this simply. New Order, the Mexican movie about anarchy and revolution in the face of horrific class repression, will be the movie of the year. It’s a movie that is better than Parasite, and deserves to win the Oscar’s best movie of the year. Oh, it won’t win. Nope. But why won’t it win if it deserves to win, Taylor?? Because it doesn’t give one single F@#$. And yet, it deserves all the trophies. It deserves all the international acclaim that Parasite received, and more. And you can watch it over on AppleTV, and really most of the rental streaming services I think.
It has so many things to say that just can’t be said any other way. I’m getting ahead of myself. What is it? New Order is a political horror cinematic experience unlike any other. It’s as if Mexico think-tanked up a modern French Revolution all their own. It’s shocking. It’s horrifying. And it’s 100% of the moment. It’s a clarion call, and a warning siren all at once. It’s a radical political come-to-Jesus moment, and an accusation all in one. And yet, at the end of it, I’m sure 90% of the people that watch this psychic train wreck of a film will wonder just happened to them and why. And though I’m thinking this movie will be seen by the wrong people and understood by be even too fewer people, I still believe this movie was necessary. Really, really necessary.
Before you go any further, if you’d like to be shocked, and awakened like Mexican director Michel Franco wants you to be, I wouldn’t read any further. Because in order to talk through this shotgun to the head of a movie, we are going to have to spoil all the surprises and the details… otherwise we won’t have a common ground to discuss from. Got it? So shoo. Go watch the film. Then come back.
Wealth.
This movie is 100% about wealth. It’s about the ruling powerful and how they haven’t learned anything from history. It’s actually a testament of power, raw firepower, available to the truly crazily rich that another French Revolution hasn’t happened globally yet. The disparity of wealth has never been greater throughout the planet. The upper 1% of wealth owners own over half of all personal wealth in the world. And the bottom 50%? What percentage of the global wealth do you think they own? I seriously want you to guess – think about it. I will place it in the lines below this paragraph, and in order to see the answer, you will need to highlight the text. So stop. Think. The top 1% own 43%. The bottom 50%??? Yeah, they own 1% of the wealth. Stop, let’s talk about this later…. I’m spinning up way too early! hahah.
Did I mention this is the best movie of the year yet? Yeah, this is the best movie of the year. My opinion anyway. And we’ll get to the controversy surrounding this movie in a bit. And trust me, there was a lot of controversy.
New Order Movie Walkthrough
Really? I think I could summate the entirety of the film in a single sentence. There’s like, nothing to it. And yet, atom bombs. How?
The movie opens in Mexico, at a high society wedding. It’s a fairly casual affair, but even so, the piles of money represented by the attendees is readily apparent. As the guests begin to arrive, it starts to become apparent to the movie viewer, if not the attendees, that something chaotic is happening outside the compound walls. Soon after, Rolando, a beloved ex-employee of the family’s staff, arrives, asking for help for his wife Elisa. They were at the hospital for a scheduled procedure for his wife, but chaos erupted, and everyone in the hospital was thrown out. Rolando needs to get his wife to a private clinic, but he will need to pay up front. How much? 200,000 pesos. How much is that? It comes to about $10,000. (A bargain basement procedure here in the United States… I should probably hold my thoughts to myself until we get to the end, or we are going to be here all day.)
After some back and forth, he is dismissed out of hand. But eventually Marianne (Naian González Norvind), the bride, finds out about Rolando’s distress, and becomes determined to get him the money he needs for his wife. In the melee of the celebration (and the missing marriage official) Rolando leaves and returns home. Marianne is actually able to get the money for Rolando and Elisa, but when she finds out that he has left, and returned home, she decides she leaves her wedding with Cristian (Elisa’s son I think? and nephew of Rolando? This movie doesn’t care whether you know who the players are, that’s for sure, what with people dying left and right, I get it.). They cross town, and get Elisa the help that she needs. And if anyone deserves to survive the chaos of this film, it’s definitely Marianne. She is our films angel… but she is the only one wearing solid red… a bride in red? Hrmmmmm. Seems quasi-significant, don’t you think??
While Marianne is away, trying to get through the city’s blockades, the wedding is attacked by rioters. The happy celebration quickly turns into a blood bath as the help rises up against their employers, and joins in with the rioters. People are shot. Wallets, jewelry, and cutlery are all stolen… the bank vault is emptied. And the mother of the home is shot in the head. No one is spared. It’s almost as if this isn’t a robbery, but rather it’s vengeance. Huh. Why would that be? And as the chaos continues, and devolves into outright anarchy, there are key individuals who are abducted from the group, and taken hostage. Cut back to Marianne, who has successfully figured out how to navigate the city’s chaos in order to get Rolando and Elisa the money that they need. But she isn’t able to get back to her wedding. But THANKFULLY, the military is there, and they have offered to help! Salvation.
Nope.
Marianne is taken, her things are stolen, and she is rounded up to a detention facility. She is stashed in a massive incarceration facility with tons of other unfortunate individuals. While there, they are numbered on their foreheads (so many leitmotifs happening here all at once I can’t keep them all straight… Germany Ghettos, Marks of the Beast, Revelation, etc., etc.) and told to tell their family’s to comply with the military’s demands for money. It should be said, that in the middle of the chaos, the Mexican military has taken the opportunity to basically overthrow the government and create a military junta. But thankfully, Marianne’s family has connections in the government and the military! They will figure this all out! (I totally did not see what was coming. So my ironic exclamation points should be probably ignored at this point.)
There are several threads going on in order to try and get Marianne back. The family starts working with the new government directly. But when Marianne’s abductors contact the family via Cristian and Marta, the family chooses to avoid telling the government. Marta and Cristian work hard to move the money secretly on Marianne’s behalf. But when they make the exchange, the captors want another million pesos, ($50,000). Yeah, that’s really… really, really… bad news for Cristian and Marta. Heck, it’s horrific news for Marianne. When Cristian and Marta let Marianne’s family know, they tell the government that Marta and Cristian have abducted Marianne. (!??!?!!?!) But the new military government will step in and help this family. We can trust them. I’m sure of it. Marianne will be safe, but Cristian and Marta are going to be toast. As long as we have a safe bride. Right? We are going to have a safe bride, I’m sure of it.
The government takes Cristian, and Marianne, marches them both to a nondescript hotel, and shoot Marianne in the head. Then the force Cristian to hold the gun, to get his prints on the gun… and they shoot him in the head. Marta is hanged. And Marianne’s fiancé comes to see the crime scene, where the military extends their condolences for the death of his fiancé. I mean, it is awful that the family’s attempts to work on their own to get Marianne back backfired. Sad really. THE END.
New Order Nuevo Orden Movie Deconstruction
We need to chat about the elephant in the room… when this movie was released in Mexican cinemas it was roundly panned. Maybe even hated? Out on social media it was destroyed. It was blasted as “classicist, racist, and stereotypical.” Worse? When Mexican director, Michel Franco, claimed that it was a case of reverse racism, he was pilloried. (He is, after all, a white Mexican.) And so the film did not go over well in Mexico. Got it. They derided it for playing to old tropes, Mexicans as money-grubbing thieves? Maybe? I mean, the movie community hasn’t treated Mexicans well ever. Like, not even once. So I get it.
But what’s interesting about the cinematic universe is that it is a global community. And what might not play well in Mexico might play differently elsewhere. And personally, this movie laid me out. Why? Because wealth disparity around the world is at an incredible level. To review, the top 1% own over 50% of the wealth. And the bottom 50% own 1% of the globes wealth. JUST unbelievable.
Isn’t that just mind blowing to you? It was to me. I mean, it makes sense. And yet, it’s a number my brain can’t wrap itself around. Can’t grasp the implications of it. And before you American readers get too high and mighty about that upper crust other, that 1% group that you think you aren’t a part of… I bet you, you might be closer to that 1% global wealth ownership than you realize. While being in the 1% here in America, you will need $7 or $8 million. But to be in the GLOBAL 1% of wealth owners, you need approximately $870,000 (according to Credit Suisse). Some of you just got really uncomfortable really fast. I’m betting that a large swath of my readers have that in their retirement accounts alone. No? Let alone including the value of your home. Let alone your yearly income. So, before you start joining the global poor in your disdain for the upper 1%, think long and hard. Really long, and really hard.
Hollywood literally cannot remake this movie. I mean it could, but it’d be a modern reprisal of the civil war, wouldn’t it? Maybe it would be something like Bushwick? Minus the heavy hitting social message I guess. But Mexico and Central America have historically had an issue with abductions for ransom money. Hundreds of abductions occur every year. Maybe this is why the movie hit such a nerve? But even so, globally, we have a problem with the disparity of wealth between the upper 1% and the bottom 50%. 78 million people hold 50 times the wealth that 3.9 billion people hold? Those numbers are staggering. Wasn’t the French Revolution based on a similar problem? (Please, don’t walk me through the details of the French Revolution and my grossly oversimplified summation… you know what I mean.) What would happen if we had a modern day French Revolution targeting the upper 1%? (I’m actually sensing a crazy manuscript right there. Maybe I should write it! hahah. We’ll title it – “The Green Wave: because it was well over due – and we’ve got nothing to lose.”)
—- Pause —- No really… I’m digging on this idea all of a sudden. Let’s think about it for a moment. How could a global uprising begin that would be realistic? The FBI, the CIA, the NSA hears everything, and it would be impossible for a global uprising to stay off the the networks, or away from the authorities that have a vested interest in keeping a modern French Revolution from happening. So the masses couldn’t use TikTok to amass a movement, or Facebook. Right? What if one person, with the help of a few friends, abducted Bezos, Musk, and Zukerberg? No, didn’t abduct them… held them for ransom within their own homes. With enormous security forces amassing outside, the group releases a call to action against the members of the world’s top 100 hyper-wealthiest people in a bid to create a massive wealth redistribution program. Just the top 100 wealthiest people in the world own 3.2 trillion dollars. And while this group had planned this attack on these three individuals for years, all it would take would be an uprising, a groundswell, to take the rest of the top 97. I wonder what would happen in a world like that? — /pause —
Woah, short circuited for a second there. So, while I said it would be impossible to make this movie in America, I’m wondering if maybe it would be possible? The problem is avoiding any sort of religious or political or ideological framing. And instead, just have it be 100% about wealth disparity. Set the Trump/Biden thing aside. Set the Christian/Muslim thing aside. And let stand, the monolith of all powerful money… just to watch it collapse. What would happen? Stranger things have happened in the world’s history, that’s for sure. Oh, I got so carried away, maybe this book has already been written? Let me know in the comments and I’ll ease up!
Anyway – New Order is a jackhammer of a movie. The bride is murdered, framed, and brutally shot in the head in a nondescript shower stall. It’s a horrific image to get out of one’s head. She was good… but she was wealthy. And she had to die. The Junta didn’t care. It was just about the cold hard truth that was the massive wealth disparity in the country of Mexico. If you read Thomas Picketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, you’ll see that it is only violence that has moved the world back towards more sane levels of wealth distribution in the past two hundred years. It’s the only thing. And New Order knows this to be true. Shocking as it is.
Edited by: CY