Marty Supreme Is A Whirlwind American Odyssey At Its Most Spectacular
Dream big.
The American dream is alive and desperate as ever in Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet). He wants to be great. He knows with absolute certainty, that he will be great. He’s arrogant, bullish, morally bankrupt, and utterly charming. The titular character in Josh Safdie’s latest film makes you wonder, is this what it has always meant to be an American?
Marty Supreme is Josh Safdie’s first solo directorial effort in 17 years after his split with co-director and brother Benny Safdie. And from the first opening sequence that breathlessly follows Marty from the cramped shoe store in 1952 New York City, where he is the best (and most irritating) salesman, into the dark stockroom where he and his married girlfriend Rachel (Odessa A’zion) have sweaty, hurried sex, it’s crystal clear that the signature frantic energy that has characterized the Safdies’ movies like Good Time and Uncut Gems all comes from Josh. And when the sex scene cuts suddenly to a shot of Marty’s semen swimming through the uterus to the soaring synthy vocals of Alphaville’s “Forever Young,” it’s even more abundantly clear that Marty Supreme is operating on a level of ballsy absurdity that no other movie this year can dream of touching.
Timothée Chalamet plays the role he was born to play in self-destructive hustler Marty Mauser.
Like the Safdie brothers’ best protagonists, Marty Mauser is less a human being than a force of nature, a tsunami of cocky charisma that mows down everything in his path. He is hell-bent on earning the title of greatest table tennis champion in the world, and has already proven himself in several local competitions. But he gets his biggest shot for the top at the world championship in Europe, where he is picked to represent the U.S. He is so sure that he will win that he bullies the tournament’s president into giving him a suite at the most expensive hotel in the city, which is where he meets Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow), a former Hollywood starlet married to the wealthy industrialist Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary). Marty’s sheer arrogance earns him an unlikely amorous connection with Kay and an even more unlikely professional connection with Milton, who absolutely loathes him at first sight, but sees business potential in the ping-pong industry.
Marty’s on top of the world — until he isn’t. Marty’s meteoric rise is suddenly brought to a halt with his humiliating loss to Japanese player Koto Endo (played by Koto Kawaguchi, the real-life winner of the Japanese National Deaf Table Tennis Championships), sending Marty back to New York penniless and title-less. Determined to seek revenge on his newly declared rival, Endo, Marty scrambles to find funds to play at the next tournament in Japan, sending him on a manic, madcap odyssey that is as exhilarating as it is exhausting.
Kevin O’Leary is shockingly good as Marty’s chief antagonist, lending a sinister affability to the wealthy industrialist.
Marty Mauser is loosely inspired by the real-life hustler and late table-tennis champion Marty Reisman, but to call Marty Supreme a sports movie or a biopic-adjacent film does it a disservice. Yes, Marty Reisman was a larger-than-life table tennis player who popularized the sport in America with bravado and flair (he was known for his big lapels, fur coats, and signature fedora). But this level of hyperbole speaks to something far beyond the man. It’s cinematic mythmaking at its grandest and most obscene, a crass ode to the American Dream, in all its highs and lows. The majority of the film follows Marty on his desperate quest to earn enough money to book a flight to Japan, taking the audience on a winding, chaotic journey through New York City’s smoky backrooms and shiny, artificial penthouses. Marty steals, cheats, and steals again, to get his cash — often with the help of his cabbie best friend and fellow ping-pong player Wally (Tyler the Creator), or the now heavily-pregnant Rachel, desperately in love with Marty and determined to leave her husband. But Marty is sent on several anxiety-inducing detours throughout his quest (each more distressing than the last) and eventually ends up at the door of Milton Rockwell, who demands the unthinkable from him.
It all wouldn’t be so watchable if it weren’t for Chalamet’s magnetic performance. Like Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems, Chalamet plays the worst person you know, whose undeniable charisma pulls everyone into his orbit and, ultimately, destroys him. With his pencil-thin mustache, greasy hair, and unibrow, Marty is sleazy, he’s slimy, but he’s also irresistible — either as someone you love to hate, or someone you love to watch crash and burn. Either way, you end up rooting for him.
The real breakout of the movie may be Odessa A’zion.
But while Chalamet is predictably great, A’zion is the greatest surprise of the film. As Marty’s childhood best friend and illicit lover Rachel, she’s just as delusional and desperate as Marty, and A’zion conveys a raw vulnerability and greedy ambition so oversized that they threaten to overwhelm her petite frame. She matches Chalamet beat-for-beat in terms of sheer audacity, making A’zion perhaps the secret breakout performance of the film. The rest of the supporting cast, full of newcomers and veterans alike, are no slouches either. Gwyneth Paltrow, fresh out of semi-retirement, is fantastic, while Fran Drescher and Abel Ferrara add some life and color to Marty’s life as his distressed family. Tyler the Creator, in his debut acting role, is incredibly natural and warm as Wally (we expect the roles to come apace for Tyler after this), while Kevin O’Leary is shockingly sinister as the main antagonist in Marty’s life.
It’s the kind of ensemble that most directors would kill for, but is almost typical for a Safdie movie, which have frequently combined raw, off-the-streets talent with terrific character actors. Marty Supreme is like the culmination of all the best Safdie characteristics: frantic, frenetic, with a grimy look courtesy of cinematographer Darius Khondji, and the closest thing to experiencing a panic attack for two and a half hours.
Marty Supreme is a tale of hubris and humiliation, and how they go hand-in-hand when it comes to the pursuit of the American Dream. Marty Mauser is the epitome of that dreamer: a self-destructive hustler with ambitions so sky-high that he flew close to the sun and melted the candle-wax holding his wings together long ago — he’s flying purely by sheer force of will. It’s a role of a lifetime, and Chalamet’s star power shines so bright and blindingly that it’s basically a supernova.
