La Máquina Runs on Its Final Sacrifice

Spoilers for all six episodes of La Máquina below.

Fourteen years ago, during a drunken night at the Berlin Film Festival, Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna had an idea for a project that would reunite them onscreen. It would focus on the complicated relationship between an aging boxer and his manager, it would be filmed in Spanish and set in Mexico City, and it would center a moment they both experienced in their careers: knowing when to walk away from an opportunity. A decade of fine-tuning their script with a team of collaborators transformed it into La Máquina, Hulu’s first Spanish-language series, and an exploration of resisting America’s “culture of winning,” as García Bernal puts it. “We wanted to find an anti-fable where losing was winning your freedom.”

García Bernal plays boxer Esteban Osuna, nicknamed “La Máquina” for his years of machine-like efficiency in the ring. As he enters the downslope of his career, his manager and best friend, Andy Lujan (Luna), reveals that a shadowy organization called Otras Personas is calling in a debt — Esteban must lose his title match or both their families will pay a fatal price. Each is already deep in personal crisis: Esteban, who never got over his father abandoning him as a child, is hallucinating and suffering memory loss after decades of fighting; Andy is struggling to have a baby with his wife. These subplots seemingly have a natural happy ending: If Esteban won his match or made peace with his father, or Andy and his wife got pregnant and found a way to escape Otras Personas, everything would be fine.

But García Bernal and Luna — who broke out in Alfonso Cuarón’s 2001 queer classic Y Tu Mamá También, reunited in 2008’s Rudo Y Cursi and 2012’s Casa de Mi Padre, and formed two production companies together — weren’t interested in obvious conclusions. The two wanted to craft a “counter-narrative” that explored the ambiguities of life, particularly the idea that loss — even death — can offer an entirely new path. Esteban’s pain about his father’s absence inspires him to be a more present father. Andy’s wife leaves him, giving him the humility he desperately needed. And finally, Esteban delivers the best fight of his life but still loses in the ring, as Andy had bribed the judges to ensure Otras Personas got their due. Both actors render this final moment with heartbreaking clarity: Andy, with a satisfied smile on his face in response to Esteban’s exemplary fighting, silently walks away from the bout to deliver himself to Otras Personas as a wild-eyed Esteban desperately asks his corner “Where’s Andy?” By sacrificing himself, Andy secures Esteban’s freedom — then lives forever in Esteban’s memory, popping up in the series’ final scene as a ghost comfortably talking shit in the duo’s boxing gym. Esteban lost the title and Andy lost his life, but what some may see as a tragedy, Luna says, is actually about sacrifice: “It’s a beautiful moment of friendship.”

You two started working on this idea a decade ago. Were these endings for Esteban and Andy always what you had in mind?
Gael García Bernal: There were key elements there from the beginning: the boxer at the height of success, and when it starts to get prolonged — milking the cow, in a way. We wanted to find an anti-fable where losing was winning your freedom. That’s when the inclusion of Otras Personas came about. It’s great to play with this God-like figure, the mythological aspect of who writes the path of someone in life, humans or gods. That’s when the other writers and collaborators were incorporated into the show; they helped us find the logic around that, from point A to point B. Especially Marco Ramirez, who was good at administering that into the format of a series.

Diego Luna: The project transitioned. There is a film script, it’s eight or nine years old, and that is where the core of this story is. Many of the elements we are working with are there, and this idea of getting your freedom through losing was an abstract idea we had always had. The sacrifice of the friend is also something that has always been there — this very unbalanced friendship needs this sacrifice to set things straight. In every version, there was always the need for understanding to come at the end. It’s a beautiful moment of friendship. But the sacrifice changed through time, and it wasn’t until Marco got the story in his hands that he found the right way to do it.

What experiences inspired you to approach the “losing is winning” theme?
G.G.B.: We live in a society that is pulsating for the perpetuity of success. There’s no manual for how to escape from that. Success is so, so relative. When we’re asked what success means for us, most of the time we answer in terms of work — doing what we love is success. For me, the fame aspect, which sometimes equals success in a very superficial way, was something I had to transition into. I had to find my own understanding of that, and make that not bother me. I wasn’t looking to be a public person when I was starting to be an actor; I wanted to be an actor because I found my vehicle to freedom. I wanted to keep using that vehicle to freedom as a form of expression, so that I wasn’t limited by other people’s expectations — that would be an experience that is equal to losing. So I had to say no to things. I had to realize that what I said no to was as important to what I said yes to.

D.L.: I could say “I agree,” and that’s it, move on, but I want to put it in simple terms: It has happened to me many times as an actor that the way to actually do a project is step out of it. Even though I would love to be part of this project, being part of it is not helping it. You step out and you decide to witness from afar. It’s kind of nice to not take it personal, to leave aside your needs or that pulse that tells you, I really wanna do this character, and think, No, the best is for this story to be told the right way. And I’m not there. It’s very difficult to establish a parallel with Esteban’s life because the career of a boxer has nothing to do with the acting career, or the one of telling stories — in fact, it’s the exact opposite. The sport is about winning and losing. If my life or my career was about winning or losing, I don’t know if I would be able to take it all.

In the finale, Esteban gives all he has in one last boxing match and then retires. Andy pays off the judges to ensure that Esteban loses, per the demands of the Otras Personas, then sacrifices himself to that organization to save Esteban and his family. The final scene shows Esteban helping to train his sons at the boxing gym. He hears and sees Andy, then the camera pivots around and reveals that Andy was a vision — but their friendship is going to endure, even if only in Esteban’s memory. How did this become the end of the season? Did you film chronologically?
D.L.: [Laughs.] It was one of the first things, no?

G.G.B.: It was the first thing we shot together.

What was that like, to do it in reverse?
G.G.B.: That happened with Y Tu Mamá También. We shot the last sequence at the beginning.

D.L.: That’s true! I forgot that.

G.G.B.: There’s a practicality to it emotionally. The ending is Aristotelian. There’s nothing left to tell. It’s a bit of an epilogue: The hurricane passed and the remnants are still there. It liberates us from trying to gain the momentum to send them to that climax. We don’t have to work for that anymore. It’s there, it’s what it is. We might feel one thing, but the camera is seeing something different. Let the narrative be a consequence and not the guiding force.

D.L.: It sets the energy and the expectations in the right place. It’s like the big difference between shooting a documentary and a film. With a documentary, you start knowing that by the end, you will think differently about the subject and the story. You did not succeed if nothing transformed you. In Berlin, we said it’s about changing the narrative of the ending: Succeeding is knowing you have to fail. How do we do it? We know exactly where we’re going, and we won’t rest until we get there.

You’ve known each other your whole lives. You’ve acted together before. Was there a moment on this set where you were surprised by a choice the other made?
G.G.B.: I was very surprised by Diego’s energy and the way he kept in character throughout the shoot whenever he had the makeup and the clothes on. It was his way of concentrating, but not in that kind of tortured actor way. Diego was very open with the joy of this character. I was surprised — Wow, he’s really going for it all the time. Andy’s energy kept the set alive. Andy would love to be the center of attention on a set, and would use the moment to be a producer, director, actor, everything. He was making fun out of everyone and everything.

D.L.: There are two things I’m gonna say. First, I had expectations of the work Gael was going to do, and he delivered and even surprised me — developing a boxer that has a style that is specific to the character he designed. The humanity, the sensibility of this boxer, the huge cage of emotions this boxer is carrying, is something I saw a little bit on set, but I saw more when I watched it. A lot of that is when he’s alone, when he’s watching that video, when he’s away from Andy, when he’s with the doctor, when he is reflecting on the silent moments. I felt his character’s ability to feel, and that robust energy takes over the story.

And the other is, in this project, everything, literally everything, was about us doing it. Every second we were reminded, “We’re doing this because you guys got drunk in Berlin.”

G.G.B.: [Laughs]

D.L.: “We’re doing this because you guys want to act together again. We’re gonna do this because you guys wanna shoot in Churubusco.” That is not easy to carry with you, and I always felt like Gael carried that with such pride and ease. Watching him act so freely and loosely and joyfully when we were carrying this gigantic train on our shoulders, it was like, Wow, look at him. He really let go and is just in the moment. I gotta get my shit together and stop complaining about having to drink shakes with a straw because of my prosthetics.

There is a scene in the fifth episode where Andy and Esteban say they love each other, as friends. Fans of Y Tu Mamá También were probably looking for that moment of exchanged love. Did you feel any overlaps between Julio and Tenoch’s relationship and Esteban and Andy’s, or did this one feel completely different?
D.L.: It’s completely different. The beauty of working together every 10 years is that we are different. We don’t know what would have happened to the guys of Y Tu Mamá También 20 years later. Probably we’ll find a parallel for it, but I don’t think it was even part of our conversation. These characters come from a very different background. They have a very different dynamic. The context we established for these characters also defines a lot — it’s not clear if this relationship is based on business or actual friendship. Obviously if you go really, really deep, just by being ourselves and not other actors, there’s parallels you can establish.

We were thinking a lot of Y Tu Mamá También in the rigor we put behind our work, in the amount of time we took to make decisions, in the specificity we wanted to find, in the team we were working with. There were people that worked on Y Tu Mamá También — the gaffer, Javier Enríquez, was the same guy we met there. So there is a very strong connection. I might say for both of us, it’s always there because it was a fundamental project.

You both do karaoke with Eiza González’s Irasema in the first episode. How did you want to introduce those characters?
G.G.B.: Karaoke was always there, from the first idea of us working together on that drunken night in Berlin. We said, “They must have cantarse and sublimate. We must find a way that karaoke is always there for the guys.”

D.L.: We wanted to start ahead in the career of La Máquina and avoid the flashback tool of going back in time to show you how good of friends they are or how much history is there with Irasema and Esteban. When you see them articulate a performance of karaoke like that, you understand that this is a bond that cooked for years. There’s history between the three of them, in fact — it’s a triangle. As soon as you see them you go, “Oh, shit, yes. They’ve been doing this for years.”

G.G.B.: It was very interesting to do choreography for amateur lovers of karaoke. It made it really funny and very ’80s.

D.L.: At the beginning of shooting we said, “We have to record it perfectly and really rehearse.” And then … TV. You prep, you discuss, and then you have hours or minutes to execute. We had so much fun, but we had to do it really fast. We squeezed everything out of it. We really went for it, no?

G.G.B.: The one who did it really well from the beginning was Eiza. She was like, “Come on guys, catch up.”

D.L.: You’re being nice, because she didn’t say, “Guys, catch up.” She was like, “Fuck, Diego. Get it right, you fucker!”

G.G.B.: [Laughs.] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

D.L.: I didn’t go through the rehearsal with them because the process of prosthetics really isolated me. There was the dinner on a Friday to celebrate that we were going to start shooting the next Monday, and I was in a trailer trying the prosthetics, finding the best way to do it. The same thing with the karaoke rehearsals: I rehearsed by myself for very few minutes. These two had the choreography pretty well, and I was just such an idiot, always needing to see them to know what was happening.

But in terms of story, it makes sense — these two had so much sex together, and Andy wasn’t part of that! Obviously they were gonna look very synchronized.

Gael, you recently said that filming La Máquina in Spanish was important because it is a “very existential language,” and “is your homeland.” Was there a scene for which you were most grateful to be able to act in and express yourself in Spanish? 
D.L.: There’s no way Andy would exist in English. Period.

G.G.B.: It’s true. What language we should speak is not something that normally appears in the creative process; most of the time it’s interconnected to the people who are doing it. That question might come up in circumstances like when they’re doing Napoleon and they say, “Let’s do it in English because more people are going to watch it,” and you’re like, “Man, come on. That would be Napoleon’s worst nightmare.” [Laughs.] For us, it was not a choice. It’s not even a question. We wanted that, and we wanted to do it in Mexico City and in the boxing world in Mexico.

There are many things that the musicality of Spanish offered that maybe we would have to do differently in another language. Definitely what Diego mentioned about Andy not existing. But also, in Spanish, there’s two verbs for being: permanent and transitory. So you’re always on the verge of an existential question: Are things written like this? Are they going to be the way they are? Or are they always conditional to some change? That’s engraved in the language, and that offers a huge span of possibilities to to play with. When Otras Personas comes and they say, “You guys, the destiny was already written,” there is an aspect of that which doesn’t sound like a conspiracy theory. We don’t know what Otras Personas are, really. What do they do in life? What is their job? We wanted to play with that dimension.

The way I’m understanding it is, there is a built-in ambiguity to the different versions of “being” within the language. So the “Other Persons” are a reflection of that, because they are mysterious and don’t seem like they live in a fixed way. They’re everywhere; they reflect all available possibilities.
G.G.B.: Yeah, exactly. And to put it in a more superficial example, we’re comparing Mexico and the United States. The United States is more a culture of winning, no? It’s always known as the culture of winning.

D.L.: Or losing.

G.G.B.: Exactly. Winning or losing. And in Mexico, it is not the culture of winning. I don’t know what it is. We relate more to knowing that success is not the ultimate thing in life. Maybe it has to do with history and linguistics and Protestantism and Catholicism, and it spans out to culture.

D.L.: A great example of that is the Day of the Dead. The idea of celebrating the people who are gone. We want to keep them here and to keep them around. It’s a very difficult concept to understand in other cultures.