The incredible story behind Machine, Arte's Marxist kung fu series
The creators, Fred Grivois and Thomas Bidegain, explain to us how they thought up this completely crazy martial-Marxist series. Or politics printed with tatane!
This is a big gap that even Jean-Claude Van Damme would not dare to make! Machine, which will be broadcast Thursday evening on Arte and which is already available online on the Arte.tv platform, achieves the incredible combination of kung fu and philosophy. An extravagant mix between the series of fights that fight at all costs and social reflection, against a backdrop of education in Marxism. The concept is surprising, but it is completely accepted by Fred Grivoisdirector behind the project.
“I was working on an idea for a horror film, with Noé Debré, and we had a hard time finding something that would still scare us,” he tells Première. “We thus came to the conclusion that, these days, the French are no longer afraid of much… except unemployment! The real anxiety is losing your job! To talk about this, I wanted another approach. To create a series that would speak to my children, showing them that class struggle is not a dead concept. That class struggle is still something cool. And for my daughters, I wanted to embody it through a heroine who is not a victim, as is often the case in cinema.” It is therefore with a very political ambition that Fred Grivois launched into Machine or the story of a former French special forces soldier, deserting in the Grand Est. A discreet employee in a washing machine factory, she will befriend a Marxist and philosopher worker, who will teach her the class struggle, while the young woman attacks all the villains who stand in her way and try to relocate the production tool…
Even before throwing spectacular high-kicks, the idea behind the series was clearly to show “that being on the left can be fun! In passing, we also somewhat denounce modern unionism, too far from that of Henri Krasucki with whom I grew up. For my children, today, trade unionism is people who make merguez in demonstrations! I am convinced that the fight is fought with fists.”
One thing led to another, the filmmaker – who signed Air Resistance (2015) or the thriller Black Track (2023) – begins to imagine this double-sided action series, which he will refine with Thomas Bidegaindouble Caesarized (for A prophet And Of Rust and Bone): “I liked the idea of a social fight associated with the usual fighting”, confirms the co-writer. “This is smart action. Because we can do action without being a jerk, by telling contemporary stories that are very anchored in reality.”
So why kung fu? Because Tarantino’s influence? Because this Machine has a little side Kill Bill with his yellow jumpsuit? No way. Thomas Bidegain even admits to having never seen the end of the Tarantinesque diptych and prefers to quote Jean-Luc Godard (who liked to paraphrase Koltès): “I prefer kung-fu films to political films, because in kung-fu films there is always a bit of politics while in political films there is never any kung-fu!” A maxim that guided the vision of the two creators from start to finish. “The political works are terribly serious and are aimed at people who are already very educated“, details Fred Grivois. “Even Athena by Romain Gavras ultimately addresses the bourgeoisie. It shocks the bourgeoisie but it doesn't speak to young people who need to be brought back to politics. Machine wants to show that politics can be an active, cool thing.” With the French film by René Viénet in the back of their minds, Can dialectics break bricks? (1973) – in which Situationists dub an old kung-fu film with extremely serious Marxist remarks – the journey of Machine is thus told “like a commitment. That of a woman who wants to hide, but will fight and not only for herself. She ultimately fights for the collective. Beyond all that, the series defends the reappropriation of the tool of production by the proletariat. Behind this is the idea of work without capital. As Emmanuel Macron says, quoted at the beginning of the series, we must reread Marx's Capital. And thus put the class struggle back on the agenda. We are in a world where there are more conflicts over identity and less over class. However, it is a concept that is still valid.”
“We use kung fu as a way to talk about Marx.”
But a rather unsexy concept to sell these days, in a small screen drowned in content and entertainment. So to make the message more digestible, Machine offers an analogy of social combat through scathing beatings. “We use kung fu as a way to talk about Marx. Beyond the fights, we wanted to put pure theory. There is an educational purpose to this series. We seek to explain the class struggle to an audience who would not watch this type of series if there had been no kung fu. In this way, the genre is a bit of a Trojan Horse. It allows you to enter sometimes austere worlds. The genre is quite democratic in a way.”
The creators of Machine still had difficulty finding a stable to accommodate their Trojan Horse. Few broadcasters wanted to embark on this expensive (because a lot of action) and yet intellectual (because Marx) project. “We were told here and there that the series was too communist“have fun Thomas Bidegain. “It's often like this when the subject is very political.”
“We managed to make a kung-fu series with Arte and to sell to Amazon a series on the reappropriation of the tool of production by the proletariat!”
At the arrival, Machine arrives on Arte with the improbable label of a 100% fighting series, which one would not expect to see on the Franco-German channel: “This is possibly a first in France.” adds Fred Grivois. “There is no series in France that has as many fight timings as us. It has never happened.” And at the same time, the producers managed to negotiate a co-production with Prime Video, which will include the series in its catalog a posteriori. Improbable, given the Marxist values ostensibly defended by Machinelight years away from the image of the giant Amazon: “What's great is that we managed to make a kung-fu series with Arte and to sell to Amazon a series on the reappropriation of the tool of production by the proletariat” welcomes Thomas Bidegain. “It's a series full of paradoxes at all levels, which I hope will touch everyone. Without kung fu, we might not have had Amazon and without Marxism, we might not have had Arte. And having both allowed the series to have the budget necessary to exist.“Who can do the splits so well?
Machineseason 1 in 6 episodes, to be seen on Arte on Thursdays April 11 and 18 (and from April 4 on arte.tv)
