Directed and co-written by Josh Safdie and loosely inspired by the table tennis player Marty Reisman, Marty Supreme is teeming with nervous energy, not unlike the films the helmer previously made alongside his younger brother Benny. Set in the early 1950s, the film’s protagonist spends much of the film’s runtime fighting tooth and nail in search of a Ping Pong World Championship. However, as the audience learns through an opening sex scene and the ensuing credits depicting millions of sperm cells fertilising an egg, Marty has also impregnated a young woman named Rachel, played by newcomer Odessa A’zion.
The qualities of characterisation that Safdie brought to his earlier works are present here, but the voltage is turned to the max. Chalamet’s Marty tumbles through every obstacle placed before him with glib repartee. He is witty and seemingly intelligent, if not especially likeable or sincere. Instead of utilising this characterisation in service of a sports melodrama, Safdie pivots, framing Marty’s ambition not as inspiration but as compulsion – a perverse impulse of the self-aggrandising performer. In doing so, the film reveals that Marty’s machismo and self-efficacy are not congenital traits, but practiced habits, rehearsed in service of his manufactured catapult towards greatness.
Safdie’s frenetic filmic language is akin to Marty’s verve – walking the line between cinéma vérité and hyperstylized formalism. Precisely because nothing lies at rest – including legendary production designer Jack Fisk’s meticulously constructed environments – it feels as though even the most ostensibly placid of compositions in Marty Supreme are pulsating. Safdie’s unrest forces the audience to experience each frame viscerally – mirroring Marty’s onscreen missteps.
Amid Safdie’s whirlwind, Chalamet becomes the comedic and emotional anchor of the film. With a faux-unibrow and the acne of a teenager, Chalamet’s Marty takes on the physicality of the young dreamer – impassively seducing a much older, ageing actress played by Gwyneth Paltrow in a number of scenes. Because of Chalamet, Marty Supreme is less focused on the sport of ping pong than it is on the sport of mischief and self-delusion – making Marty’s numerous flaws as compelling as his incessant drive.
Chalamet brings a vulnerability to the autocratic character he plays, making us root for the anti-hero, even if only slightly. He insinuates an inner turmoil, not of a conspicuous gloom, but of oblique emotional assaults, feint jabs that slightly mar his outward bravado. Chalamet’s Marty desires greatness above all else – and to a fault. Yet it is in his perpetual begging, his willingness to let others degrade him in service of his goal, allows audiences to empathise with him despite his unpleasantness. The infinitesimal cracks in his armour, the lens through which to view his soul, are at the heart of the film.
Attempting to offer anything new to the discourse surrounding Marty Supreme without mentioning its star, Timothée Chalamet, is an almost insurmountable task. Chalamet, much like his character Marty Mauser, is – by his own admission – in pursuit of greatness. The French-American actor transcends the self-effacing nature of his early career persona and replaces it with sheer audacity.
Marty Supreme is in cinemas worldwide on Friday, December 26th.
