Marty Supreme
A character study of American exceptionalism.
The protagonists in Safdie movies walk like big cats: shoulders up, head thrust forward, a loping gait toward the camera. They look down the barrel of the lens as they walk. Their posture says, “We’re coming for you.” There’s a world of entitlement in that stride. These men are always on the move, always scheming, always trying to get to a prize they believe should be already theirs. Whether they actually deserve it… well.
Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet) is stamped straight from the Safdie mold. Director Josh Safdie makes a case for himself as the more aggressive Safdie brother; he and Benny Safdie split after Uncut Gems to pursue their own projects, a pair of more-or-less sports biopics. Benny’s film The Smashing Machine was a near shot-for-shot remake of a documentary of the same name. Marty Supreme swings in the opposite direction. It’s based loosely on the life of Marty Reisman, a real-life hustler and table tennis champion, but its construction is looser, more convulsive. Mostly it’s a series of tense standoffs and chase scenes, with Marty himself always winding up the tension in the room like a man stretching a rubber band just to see how far it can go.
Marty’s problem, he feels, is that no one respects him or his dreams. He believes he’s destined for greatness as a table-tennis world champion, a sport no one in the United States in the 1950s takes seriously. The officials in the International Table Tennis Association can’t stand him or his arrogance. Chalamet plays the character like a terrier: small and wiry, his small frame belying an athletic build. He’s lithe and aggressive, a man who sees himself as an underdog and who thinks everyone else should be rooting for him because of his underdog status, and who simultaneously believes he’s God’s gift to ping-pong. When he decides he wants something, he won’t let go. When he isn’t interested in something, to him it isn’t his problem, even if that something is a debt, a missing dog, a love affair, a familial obligation, or his pregnant girlfriend Rachel (Odessa A’zion—terrific).
More than anything, Marty is a grifter. His goal might be one of earning respect and legitimacy on the world stage, but he’s willing to do anything to get there. He’ll steal if he has to and scam if theft won’t work. He’s both charismatic and abrasive, a combination that draws people in and inevitably leaves them to deal with the wreckage in his wake as he moves on to bigger things. One of his love affairs, a retired actress played by Gwyneth Paltrow, gets pulled into his orbit by sheer force of Marty’s attention, though once he has a hold of her, she can’t stand his company. When he insists on a favor from her, something that will help him erase his debt and pay his way to the world championships, she holds out on him. When it becomes clear that he won’t stop asking her until she gives in, she throws her head back in the air and shouts “Fine!” If he can’t win through charm, he’ll do it by exasperating everyone else.
Ultimately, Marty Supreme is a crash course in American studies, an examination of a nation that can be so charming and effusive while simultaneously bulldozing its way over everyone else in the world to get what it wants. Marty is Mr. America, the United States writ petty, though he wouldn’t understand the difference in scale given the size of his own ego. If you can stomach the drop, it’s fun to ride the whirlwind with him, though you might feel sick by the end. —Sarah Welch-Larson
★★★☆
Marty Supreme is in wide release now.