Marty Supreme
Timothée Chalamet will not be beaten in a marathon of New York ping-pong survival madness.
Marty Mauser (Chalamet) has his eyes on the prize and its small plastic orange ball with his name on it, a magically gifted table tennis player but with a turbulent streak for getting his way. Marty is a born showman trying to make it to the Tokyo Championships to prove he is the best but must hustle his way to get there, while trying to market his own personalised balls for when he makes it big. Like the black Opal that Howard Ratner is constantly chasing in Uncut Gems (2019), Marty must run and jump through countless hurdles coming at him and back again to get it, no matter what destructive mess he leaves behind, no matter how many lies he tells, no matter how many people are hurt in the process. He’s at the height of narcissism and will use whoever is around him to get what he wants, he’s a despicable character but you can’t help but admire him in his elaborate odyssey. He's like David facing off against Goliath, young, tiny, foolish, but with a strong will to take down the giant.
“He looked David over and saw that he was little more than a boy, glowing with health and handsome, and he despised him.”- 1 Samnuel 17:42
The Safdie’s like a self-centred and anarchic protagonist, that much is true in their similar rumbunctious pictures like Good Time (2017), and Uncut Gems (2019). In a solo directed feature from Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme is no exception to this and even further carries the baton of frustrating whirlwind of mischief in a more ambitiously upward looking reach for the stars. If Uncut Gems was about how someone self-destructs within their own selfish schemes, Marty Supreme is about how someone may succeed in them. Staring down at the capitalist forces built to stop the dreamers, Marty Supreme is about what it takes to defy them.
It’s worth noting that Marty is Jewish, living in post WW2 New York, Marty appears to be an underdog trying and reach greatness, but he sees himself as a winner already. “I’m like Hitler’s worst nightmare” he boasts to the press. Chalamet impresses on the highest level in his most energetically committed and encompassing performance as the central head and mouth of the film talking and backhanding his way through all manner of trouble and never letting up with an instant of self-confidence as to who Marty Mauser is and what he is prepared to do. Holding his colleague at the shoe store in which he works at gunpoint just to get at some money that his boss owes him is the level of gutsy anguish that Marty is willing to go to, and that’s only in the first five minutes. Chalamet carries this screwball insanity on his back with just the right amount of magnetism and deviousness to keep you locked in with such a slippery distrusting character.
Josh Safdie and Ronald Bronstein’s script incorporate a largely fictional sports drama loosely inspired by the life of Marty Reisman, engrossed in a world of egotistical Manhattan characters all after something and often using and threatening each other to get what they want. Marty runs into and exploits many of these characters and runs into even more as he tries to escape the last person he grifted. The second to Chalamet is Odessa A’zion’s Rachel, Marty’s childhood friend and lover who is equally as drastic as Marty for scores and security and clings to Marty’s confidence for what he can give her. Gweneth Paltrow plays Kay Stone an aging Hollywood star who is also charmed by Marty’s charisma and sees Marty as an inspirational boytoy for her dead career and empty love life. Her husband Milton Rockwell played by Kevin O’Leary is a wealthy businessman who throws Marty the lifeline he urgently needs, but Marty is too selfish to appreciate it before it is taken away from him. Most scarily is Abel Ferrara as Ezra Miskin a deadly criminal with a sick dog that Marty is forced to look after and retrieve in the middle of the explosive farce.
The other crowning star of the film is Oneohtrix Point Never’s galvanising score that propulses the racing tone of the picture with operatic 80s techno in a timeless fashion. As A24 biggest budgeted picture, Marty Suprme subtly shows off where the money has gone, in its elegantly understated period production design and less so globetrotting scenery that sometimes only last a mere few seconds, and other times features live animals in ping-pong arenas. It’s a film running at the speed of light and rarely takes a moment to breath but is so absorbed in Marty’s orbit not to fail, even when failure feels certain Marty continues to gnaw at every opportunity available to him.
The Safdie formula for ramping up anxious anarchy in intense close up camerawork and rhythmic editing is all at fast play, and maybe a little too familiar at times, its an easily crowd pleasing structure for festival crowds and leads to some exhilarating scenes of impossibly gripping ping-pong action and outrageous slapstick comedy but with a lot more movies following similar suite in style its maybe getting a little tiresome. But Marty Supreme’s ace in the whole is Chalamet and the entire film is in service of him and anchored by his relentless spirit. Marty faces off against powers ten times greater than him, but instead of a slingshot he has a paddle and instead of a stone a white plastic ball that he is going to hit with all his might till the giant is toppled, and we can’t help but cheer him on as he does so.
“Reaching into his bag and taking out a stone, he slung it and struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell facedown on the ground. So David triumphed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone; without a sword in his hand he struck down the Philistine and killed him.”- 1 Samnuel 17:49-50
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