Marty Supreme

This comedy-drama is not at all what I was expecting: it’s a sports movie in name only that spends very little time on the sport in question, and it’s really a darkly comic character study of a deeply toxic individual, but one where Timothée Chalamet’s charismatic central performance somehow manages to maintain the audience’s sympathies through thick and thin.

Premise:  In New York in 1952, while working as a shoe salesman in his uncle’s store, brash and entitled Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet) is determined to become the table tennis world champion, and he won’t let anyone or anything stand in the way of him fulfilling his self-appointed destiny.

Review:

In 2019, directors Benny Safdie and Josh Safdie made Uncut Gems, a film which told the story of a thoroughly selfish protagonist who used everyone around him for his own benefit with absolutely no regard for them as human beings.  Although I could admire the direction from a technical perspective, and Adam Sandler gave a fantastic dramatic performance, I hated being in the company of his thoroughly unsympathetic and unlikeable character so much so that the film just annoyed me.

Six years later, and Josh Safdie (this time directing without his brother) has released Marty Supreme, a film which tells the story of a thoroughly selfish protagonist who uses everyone around him for his own benefit with absolutely no regard for them as human beings. And yet ... Marty Supreme is a completely different viewing experience from Uncut Gems, and that’s entirely down to the fact that Timothée Chalamet‘s charismatic performance ensures that Marty Mauser remains an enjoyable character to be around, even when he’s treating everyone around him terribly.

“…a breakout role for Odessa A’zion…”

Objectively, Marty Mauser is a self-aggrandising, narcissistic, arrogant, selfish, obnoxious, self-centred toxic human being who hurts and uses everyone around him – especially his mother (played by Fran Drescher), his best friends (Tyler the Creator and Luke Manley), and his lover Rachel (Odessa A'zion).  Playing Rachel has been a breakout role for Odessa A'zion, and rightly so – her character is multifaceted and complex (Rachel is Marty’s childhood friend, who’s now married but is having an affair with Marty, which results in an unplanned pregnancy), and Odessa A'zion brings Rachel to life in often very unexpected ways.  But Rachel is just one of the many people that Marty uses and then abandons to fulfil his self-appointed destiny to become the first American table tennis world champion.

Interestingly, Marty Supreme has (at least in part) been marketed as a sports movie, but it’s really not.  It’s a movie about a character who’s obsessed with fulfilling the grand destiny that he believes he has, and who believes that achieving that destiny is so important that it justifies any of the actions that he takes along the way.  But that destiny could have been anything – the fact that Marty’s obsession is table tennis is really not that critical to the plot (although it does result in some truly entertaining table tennis sequences, and allows the film to explore America’s attitudes towards Japan in the post-WWII 1950s era).

“…Timothée Chalamet’s performance is truly a revelation…”

On paper, therefore, Marty Supreme sounded very similar to Uncut Gems, and I was afraid that I would be equally irritated by the main protagonist – but Timothée Chalamet’s performance is truly a revelation, as he manages to make his obnoxious character, if not sympathetic, at least entertaining.  Although you probably wouldn’t want to spend time with him in real life, Marty Mauser is a fun character to observe, as he bounces from con to con, always hustling and attempting to talk himself out of one predicament after another.  Importantly, Timothée Chalamet’s performance also manages to hint that, despite everything, Marty may not be completely irredeemable.

It’s easy to see how the characters around him have been drawn into Marty’s schemes, often even when they know better, because of his silver tongue and irresistible energy.  Even the newer characters to enter Marty’s life – like retired actress Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow and her rich husband Milton Rockwell (Kevin O'Leary), or Ezra Mishkin (Abel Ferrara), a New York criminal who Marty attempts to take advantage of – all seem unable to consistently resist Marty’s charms, even if they see through him from time to time.

“…the film works because of the deftness of its central performances…”

The film is more of a character study than having a traditional three-act plot structure, and it’s quite episodic as we move from one chapter in Marty’s life to the next, often leaving certain characters for extended periods, before returning to them and picking up their plot threads sometime later.  But because the film is really a portrait of Marty Mauser as a character, rather than it being a sport movie about his competitive career, jumping around like this is never disorientating, because we’re always following everything from Marty’s perspective as he lurches from one crisis to the next.

Surprisingly funny and unexpectedly entertaining, Marty Supreme is a film that works because of the lightness of its tone, and the deftness of its central performances, so that (much like the characters in the film) you can’t help but fall for its charms.