Stream It Or Skip It: ‘New Order’ on Hulu, Michel Franco’s Gruelingly Bloody Story of Class Warfare

New Order, now on Hulu, incurred the wrath of critics — both film and armchair — upon its festival debut in late 2020, and again when it hit screens in its native Mexico. Director Michel Franco came under fire for telling a story of civil unrest in which darker-skinned working-class Mexicans revolt against the lighter-skinned bourgeoisie, then drew more fire by saying the negative response to it was “reverse racism.” When the dust settled, the overall consensus on it was that it’s wildly divisive, and, after watching it, it’s easy to see why.

NEW ORDER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: It opens with near-abstraction: a shot of a modern-art painting, a naked woman splattered with green paint, furniture being hurled off a balcony, bright green water flowing down a staircase. Then, a scene in a hospital as elderly patients are quickly moved from their beds to make room for a chaotic influx of bleeding, traumatized patients. It’s chaos. Announcements blare over public address systems. A sonic backdrop of helicopters and machine guns and screaming. A slow vertical pan over masses of dead bodies.

Cut to: The complete opposite. A bubble, you might say. Marianne (Naian Gonzalez Norvind) and Victor (Enrique Singer) dance in the sunlight at their wedding, embracing and kissing. Her brother Daniel (Diego Boneta) interrupts their moment to get them all celebratory shots. Some guests arrive late because the airport is being locked down. One is a prominent official of some sort, a guest of Marianne’s father and the bearer of a generous wedding gift. There’s some discussion of his security, prompting him to leave early.

Rolando (Eligio Melendez) arrives, uninvited and underdressed, quiet but desperate. He and his wife Elisa used to work for Marianne’s family, and now Elisa is very ill. He needs money for her surgery. Marianne’s mother rounds up a paltry bit of cash for him after she callously questions his career choices, and Daniel coldly insists that he get out. Marianne decides she must help, and gets one of her paid servants, Cristian (Fernando Cuautle), to accompany her as she drives to pick up Elisa and take her to the hospital. They hear radio reports of unrest; streets are blocked off. Moments after she leaves, protesters scale the stone walls on the property. Pandemonium ensues: Looting, destruction, gunfire, murder. It’s brutal. But this is just the beginning.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: New Order is what Children of Men might be if it was directed by Michael Haneke. And Parasite is a far more nuanced and lively exploration of the class divide.

Performance Worth Watching: Norvind plays one of the few characters who’s a thoughtful human being, complex and sympathetic — and that’s maybe why she’s subject to all manner of vicious torture in this unforgiving movie.

Memorable Dialogue: Marianne’s mother: “Maybe we should’ve postponed the wedding?”

Sex and Skin: No sex, but plenty of skin in grotesque violent contexts: Naked people being hosed down in a prison camp; nude dead bodies; a ruthless rape scene; a man has his undercarriage zapped with a taser.

Our Take: By “divisive,” I mean New Order made me feel like I was cut in half with a broadsword. One half of me admires the unrelenting concision of Franco’s storytelling, his visual command, his ability to craft a dense, propulsive narrative with minimal dialogue. The film holds us in a relentless vise grip, mesmerized by what we’re seeing.

The other half is repelled by his unforgiving tone. By grueling scenes of rape, torture and execution. By a marked lack of warmth or nuance. By its off-putting both-sidesism, where the rich are self-involved and dispassionate, and the poor are savage and violent. For a moment we’re enlivened by a righteous revolt, but repulsed by the grotesquery that soon follows.

New Order is about as subtle as a bulldozer. Franco’s screenplay is fragmented and scattered. It effectively balances bracing on-the-ground perspectives with tantalizingly vague broad-view shots, but never shows thematic or narrative coherence. It borders on being a collection of scenes deployed for provocation’s sake. It’s pointlessly bleak, and unsympathetic in all directions; if Franco’s trying to craft a metaphor for modern society, he miscalculated, because the film lacks even an iota of hope or a moral center. It actively sows discomfort, and I can’t for the life of me comprehend what Franco’s intent could otherwise be.

Our Call: SKIP IT. There’s some extraordinary filmmaking here, but New Order is too unapologetically bleak to recommend.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Watch New Order on Hulu