“Marty Supreme” is the ping pong –– ahem, table tennis –– thriller you never knew you needed.
If “Uncut Gems” was the Safdie brothers’ cortisol-fueled high-speed chase across the mind of a gambling addict, “Marty Supreme” is Josh Safdie’s breakneck rollercoaster ride, tearing through the scrappy streets of the 1950s competitive table tennis scene as Marty scrambles to make enough cash to repay everyone he has used to get this far.
It won’t give you a severe heart condition like the Safdie’s 2018 anxiety endurance run, but it will give you an enjoyable case of whiplash as the plot snowballs from one scheme to the next, never giving you a chance to tally up Marty’s long list of debts.
Timothee Chalamet perfects the trope of a pimple-faced young upstart with something to prove as Marty Mauser, in an already award-winning performance. Loosely based on the real-life ping pong hustler Marty Reisman, Marty Mauser is audacious, arrogant, and shameless. He speaks in a mile-a-minute line delivery and a relentless stream of sardonic wit that somehow manages to simultaneously charm and annoy everyone around him. Like Chalamet, Marty is unashamed about his ambition. He wants to become one of the greats, knows he has what it takes, and doesn’t shy away from broadcasting it to the world.
Starring alongside Chalamet is Odessa A’zion as Rachel Mizler, who may be the only other character who sees Marty as he sees himself: his schemes are her inspiration, his lies are nothing but necessary, and together they drive each other deeper into treachery and manipulation. Her pleading demeanor, laced with its own brand of deceit, heightens the stakes and compels you to believe every lie is sincere, even against your better judgment.
The stunt casting in this film is also effective, especially with “Shark Tank’s” billionaire Kevin O’ Leary, aka Mr. Wonderful, who essentially plays himself. (Not hard to pretend to be a rich asshole when that’s just who you are.) Even so, his smug, self-satisfied portrayal of pen magnate Milton Rockwell is an entertaining contrast to Marty’s scrappy skeeviness, and serves to embody the establishment that Marty can’t quite break into, and the success he longs for.
Tyler, The Creator is featured as Wally, Marty’s fellow table tennis hustler. While distracting at first, the animated character suits him, and his immediate familiarity makes him a fitting choice for Marty’s longstanding partner in crime.
Gwyneth Paltrow is another recognizable face, making her return to the silver screen after 7 years with a solemn portrayal of Kay Stone, a wealthy 1930s actress married to Milton Rockwell, a trophy wife with her golden days behind her. While hers isn’t a standout performance, it does feel wholly genuine, and reinforces the intoxicating bravado of Marty Mauser as we see his unyielding dynamism through her eyes.
This is the torturous joy of “Marty Supreme.” Every scene is another balancing act on Marty’s house of cards.
Stone’s character (and more so, her husband’s fortune) also demonstrates to the audience Marty’s obsession with making money, which can be encapsulated in one line: “I live with the confidence that if I believe in myself, the money will follow.” Unfortunately for him, it does not. Money is the one thing he needs, and his efforts to get it send him tumbling down a hole of leveraged debts, each absurd turn in the narrative a result of his many misguided efforts.
The subsequent chaos of his money-making schemes is best encapsulated in a standout sequence where Marty checks into a hotel while on the run from the cops (par for the course for him), takes a shower after being told not to, causing the bathtub to crash through the floor, which crushes the arm of the tenant below, and injures the tenant’s dog. Good Samaritan Marty offers to take the dog to the vet, in exchange for a hefty sum, of course. Marty loses the dog, keeps the money, and attempts to scam the owner out of the subsequent reward money for his lost dog, only for the scam to fail until Rachel picks it right back up and lands both of them in even more trouble.
This is the torturous joy of “Marty Supreme.” Every scene is another balancing act on Marty’s house of cards, and it’s uniquely satisfying to see the house tumble and crash, only for Marty to rebuild it with tinier, flimsier cards.
All in the name of table tennis. Every dollar in service of the final game, a match between Marty and his rival, Endo.
Endo, played by first-time actor Koto Kawaguchi (a genuine pro table tennis player), is not a large presence in the film. He looms in the background as Marty’s ultimate challenge after besting him in a championship match. He is deaf, barely speaks, and acts as a humble contrast to Marty, who can’t seem to shut up.
Rather than being a fleshed-out antagonist, Endo is more like a representation of collectivism, a culture where one uplifts the whole, instead of Marty’s world, where you step on others to get to the top.
The most impressive aspect of “Marty Supreme” isn’t that it entertains for two and a half hours straight. It’s that it manages to do that and have it all amount to something much more than the sum of its parts.
Marty’s exploits are continuously contrasted with acts of selflessness from characters surrounding him, like Béla Kletzki, a fellow player and holocaust survivor, whom he has lunch with in the first act. Marty uses Kletzki as a distraction to impress Milton as he eyes his wife, Stone, from across the hotel restaurant. Interestingly, though, the film doesn’t focus on Milton or Marty, instead depicting Kletzki’s story in its entirety. Through flashbacks, we see him incarcerated in a concentration camp, forced to search for and disarm bombs in the surrounding area. One day, he comes across a beehive and painstakingly, Kletzki decides to smoke the bees out, cover himself in honey, and smuggle it back into the camp, where his fellow prisoners lick it off his body for sustenance.
“Marty Supreme” shows us that to live only for yourself is to live a half-life.
It is a shocking, disturbingly beautiful sequence of altruism, one that Marty uses to further his own egocentric goals. Scenes like this build Marty up as a brash microcosm of American independence, while Endo and Kletzki serve as his opposite, humble symbols of collectivism.
It’s fitting that in Marty’s bootstrap-pulling, every-man-for-himself world, there is no fame or success granted to him. He doesn’t win against Endo in the championship match; he doesn’t even make it to the championship. His only victory is a selfish, personal one in a sponsored game with no real stakes, organized by Rockwell’s company to build goodwill with Japanese customers.
“Marty Supreme” shows us that to live only for yourself is to live a half-life, to fake your way through reality, always in search of something more. But to live for other people, even just one, is to truly live. This is the lesson Marty finally confronts in the final moments of the film, and one you can learn for yourself in just a hundred and fifty minutes.
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