‘It’s the Marty Supreme Ball, not the Marty Normal Ball...’
It seems that I start every review of Timothee Chalamet’s latest success with the same caveat. While I admire his craft, I just don’t find him compelling in the same way as Ed Norton or Brad Pitt or even Tom Cruise. I can’t explain why this is a thing, but it is a thing nevertheless. Marty Supreme, an incredibly exhilarating and effective film, once again demonstrates Chalamet’s impressive range and his unerring commitment to his craft, but it’s still not the film to change my mind on whether he is a truly top-tier leading man. Anyway…
It’s 1952 in New York City and Marty Mauser (Chalemet) is convinced that he has what it takes to make it as a professional table tennis player. Unfortunately, Chalamet doesn’t have enough money to cover his trip to the British Open, a prestigious table tennis tournament and so he must tear around the Big Apple trying to secure funding for his nascent sporting career. This blueprint is basically repeated across 150 punishing minutes, with various degrees of anxiety and stress. Anyone who has seen Josh Safdie’s previous film Uncut Gems will know what to expect here.
Sports movies are typically about basketball, baseball, American football and boxing. A two and a half hour sports film about table tennis feels like a risk. Unsurprisingly, then, this isn’t a film about table tennis. While the table tennis sequences are surprisingly cinematic and exciting, this is more a film about monomaniacal obsession, self-sabotage and how challenging it is for the working classes to escape their humdrum surroundings.
Now, let’s not get it twisted, Chalamet is great here. He brings a frantic energy to Marty that forces us to root for him even though he is objectively a pretty terrible person. Safdie is perhaps commenting on the price of success. For someone like Marty Mauser, it’s impossible to succeed without exploiting others. Like Gwyneth Paltrow’s fading actress Kay Stone, or Kevin O’Leary’s influential businessman Milton Rockwell or even Ezra Mishki, a dangerous criminal and passionate dog owner, memorably portrayed by the legendary New York filmmaker Abel Ferrara. In fact, Safdie has assembled an eclectic and disparate cast of supporting characters, and it is these who make the film feel so rich and authentic. The world-building here is utterly convincing, and despite the long running time, I enjoyed every second that I spent within this universe. His portrayal of New York draws from both Ferrara but more pertinently, Martin Scorsese, whilst still feeling singular and distinct. The Safdie brothers have already developed a very recognisable style, but interestingly, this is both the first film that Josh Safdie has developed without his brother and also by far his most accomplished work (I found both Good Time and particularly Uncut Gems to be vastly overrated).
Marty Supreme flies by in the moment, but it’s also a very dense film that I’d probably need to see again to really flesh out my opinion. Alas, as it’s Oscar season, and I’ve still got a fair few other nominees to get through, I’ll just have to go with my gut – Marty Supreme is excellent.
