Dead Man’s Switch

“The dead man’s switch is a security mechanism used in subways and certain trains to guarantee that the driver is conscious in the cabin while the train is in motion. It is simple to operate; a metal ring, button, or pedal that must be activated as the train advances. If the driver loses consciousness, the train stops automatically, ensuring the safety of the passengers and the vehicle.

Metaphorically, both the name and the mechanism have a social resonance, evoking the situation of violent emergency that has engulfed Mexico for over a decade: the sense of confinement and political inertia so clearly expressed in the atmosphere of national discontent; the unfettered, unbridled nature of the violence afflicting the entire country; and the lack of competent authorities showing any commitment to their citizens.

Filing a report in Mexico means entering a hellish tunnel of mediocrity, re-victimization, and indifference. The bureaucratic libido—the state of excitement enjoyed by mid-level public officials in exercising their minor power—is unleashed against the vulnerability of ordinary citizens. Over the past twelve years, tens of thousands of people have been forcibly disappeared, and their cases have not been duly investigated. They’ve been consistently minimized by negligent authorities (not to mention authorities acting in collusion with organized crime) and relegated to oblivion, despite the desperation of the victims’ families and friends.

It is common knowledge that the Mexican justice system (and much of the national population) criminalizes victims, depicting them as responsible for their own tragedies: “If it happened, they must have done something” is the insensitive and oft-repeated fallacy. This mental operation (i.e., the victim must have done something terrible and therefore “deserves” whatever befell them) not only exempts the relevant authorities from imparting justice, but also triggers a deeply perverse variant of violence: the invisibility of the perpetrators. In the official account, forced disappearances, executions, kidnappings, mutilations, and incinerations are always caused by ghosts vaguely described as “organized crime.” And the state, both absent and abetting, often has a hand in the deaths of its own citizens within the framework of “forced disappearance.” In short, we Mexicans are terrorized by a sinister mix of criminals and authorities; of citizens acting outside the law and criminals operating under institutional protection.

The central topic of Dead Man’s Switch is the indifference toward all of these phenomena. How the inability to be moved by someone else’s tragedy enacts a new kind of violence against the victim. It not only denies her the compassionate acknowledgment of her suffering, but also denies her a face and an identity. Ultimately, it strips her of her own selfhood. This is the reality of Dalia, the protagonist, who personally experiences the disappearance of her husband, Esteban: the ghost in this story.

Dalia works as a subway driver, parents two teenage children, and lives under the oppressive urban lifestyle of Mexico City. Her own space of solace and freedom is a weekly sexual encounter with Carlos López. A stereotypical view of this love triangle would treat Esteban’s disappearance as fortuitous: as a new chance for Dalia to live more freely and to establish a more stable, transparent relationship with her lover. Of course, this isn’t how it works. Carlos López has a place in Dalia’s life only while Esteban is there: he is her escape valve, her deep breath amid monotony, her exception to the rule. Without Esteban, though, Carlos López is nothing but a low-grade stalker. Dalia’s life is constrained by the classic oppression of the traditional family: sexual exclusivity with a single partner, even when every trace of passion and physical attraction has vanished.

Yet this longstanding space of refuge becomes equally oppressive: her lover wants and strives to reproduce the very same standard of exclusivity. This insistence is what makes Carlos López yet another suspect in Esteban’s absence—and in the unresolvable plot of a disappearance with no apparent cause, no possible trace to follow. Dalia, by tolerating Carlos López, also becomes indifferent toward her own life; she proves incapable of seeking out an emotional equation that would be less painful and destructive to herself. In this sense, Dalia is a victim not only of the country’s violent panorama, but also of a profound machismo that denies her, as a woman, a face and a name of her own. Carlos López is the romantic character who embodies the latter condition: a man who doesn’t understand that his affection is violent.

Why does Dalia keep looking for Esteban if her love for him has faded? She doesn’t seem to be doing it for her children, nor Esteban’s own good. Her quest is fueled, in part, by an undeniable thirst for justice, but the root cause is more specific: Dalia no longer knows who she is without Esteban’s presence.

The paradox here is that the harder she looks for him, the more sapped of her own identity she becomes. This becomes visually obvious at the end, when she lends her face to an NGO advertising campaign to raise awareness on forced disappearance, but she seems to end up without it. Neither she nor anyone else manages to really know who she is. Dalia falls prey to the process of becoming anonymous through public exposure.

In formal terms, Dead Man’s Switch is a realist melodrama insofar as it follows the turbulent course of a victim who is in no way responsible for what is happening to her (Esteban’s disappearance, the indifference of the authorities, and her social environment). The tone and treatment are utterly realist, seeking to construct—through fiction—a documentary portrait of our time and social circumstances. The story is narrated in a linear way, from Dalia’s point of view alone, rejecting the temptation of making a thriller and building suspense by reproducing Hollywood film genres. The essential goal is to place the viewer in the protagonist’s shoes: in the experience of not knowing what happened, where he is, if he’s all right, if he’ll ever come back. These are unresolvable conditions that cause the absolute stagnation of Dalia’s life and vitality, the collapse of any future horizon, and the dissolution of her present into a state of permanent distress.

I envision this film as a mirror held up to the invisible violence endured by the protagonist and everyone around her. A violence without blood, without graphic cruelty onscreen—but pure, oppressive, invisible violence enacted against the protagonist and her surroundings. The violence of helplessness and apathy; the violence that marks our everyday lives.”

Alejandro Gerber Bicecci, Director