Marty Mauser isn’t a human being— he’s the vessel for a potent cocktail of relentless ambition and pure ego. Coasting by on the sheer force of his charisma, his arrogance ballooned so big it doesn’t allow space for anyone to refuse him, the competitive table tennis star doesn’t have an actual paying job, doesn’t worry about where he’s going to get money to pay for rent or for his next meal, and wholeheartedly believes that success in his quest to become great is inevitable, even when all of the tangible evidence around him points to the opposite. When Kay Stone, a huge movie star in the 1930s who is in the midst of mounting a big comeback on stage and in the meantime has struck up a casual sexual relationship with Marty, questions the pragmatism of his lifestyle, Marty responds that the concept of failure “doesn’t even enter his consciousness.”
Set in 1952 and inspired by the real life of flamboyant ping pong celebrity Marty Reisman, Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme— the filmmaker’s first solo directorial project sans his brother Benny since 2008— is a sprawling account of a year in the life of the 23-year-old New York City resident (played by Timothée Chalamet) that both demands that you sit with this insufferable person for two-and-a-half hours, while also swinging for a cutting examination of the pitfalls of white male hubris. As entertaining and unpredictable as its many bonkers segues are, it’s hard not to get the sense that Marty Supreme is, in a broad sense, the microwaved leftovers of Uncut Gems, the Safdie brothers’ 2019 thriller starring Adam Sandler as a jeweler and compulsive gambler who bungles his efforts to pay off his debts in his constant drive for more money and power. Marty Supreme follows a similar arc. When we first meet Marty, he’s working as a shoe salesman, turning down a promotion to manager because he believes he’s destined for greater things. He heads to London for an international table tennis championship, leaving Rachel (Odessa A’zion), the married pet store employee he’s been having an affair with, pregnant, stealing from his employers to fund his trip, and pushing his agents to create special Marty Supreme branded ping pong balls, painted bright orange in opposition to the typical white balls used in competitions. He bulldozes his way into being profiled by British reporters at the Ritz (his brand of humor includes saying in reference to an upcoming match against Bela Kletzki, a concentration camp survivor played by Géza Röhrig, that he will finish the job that Auschwitz couldn’t), seduces Kay (Gwyneth Paltrow) after spotting her in the hotel lobby, and finagles his way into cutting a deal with her husband Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary), a wealthy pen entrepreneur. He’s always right— a gig turning tricks with the Harlem Globetrotters wasn’t good enough for him until he needed the money, when all of a sudden it’s art— and he cannot accept defeat, which he ultimately suffers at the hands of Japanese player Endo (Koto Kawaguchi), kicking into gear his frantic scramble to redeem himself at the competition in Tokyo next year.
Sandler’s Howard in Uncut Gems is not a likable guy. But it’s anxiety-inducing to watch him bluster his way into an increasingly dire and dangerous series of situations, because the film gazes at him with a shrewd eye, right up to its cruel conclusion. Marty Supreme, on the other hand, casts its protagonist in an almost idolatrous light. Chalamet is committed as hell, existing in a constant state of motion even when he’s still, quick with the line deliveries and even quicker with the paddle. You can almost see the gears turning in his head as he makes his moves with virtually no hesitation, or remorse; it’s a colossal performance, and easily the actor’s best. But even as Marty fails upward as he grabs at money and power, from tracking down the lost dog of a criminal he gets involved with (a pitch perfect character role for director Abel Ferrara) to coercing his taxi driver pal (Tyler Okonma) into first letting him borrow some cash, then scamming a bunch of guys at a bowling alley for more, to pawning Kay’s jewelry, the film plays as a bit too smug to serve as a razor sharp takedown of toxic masculinity and white male privilege. The cardboard dimensionality of his victims likely has something to do with that too. It’s clearer than ever that Safdie (who cowrote the screenplay along with Ronald Bronstein, a longtime collaborator who wrote and edited four previous Safdie features) can’t write women in a way that makes them seem like people beyond the men at the narrative’s heart that they are constantly, inexplicably, bending over backwards for. Clearly, Marty is magnetic, pulling everyone around him into his orbit despite any initial resistance. There’s something to Kay, who Paltrow imbues with a chilly haughtiness that makes an intriguing juxtaposition to Marty’s hyper forthrightness, and how her slowly clawing her way back to some sort of celebrity stands in stark opposition to Marty’s plowing his way forward regardless of the consequences for those around him, but it isn’t a line the film pursues with much introspection. And as ably as A’zion holds her own against Chalamet, with Rachel ultimately running a sort of scam of her own, she’s also, in the end, not doing it for herself, but for Marty, so he can take his trip to Tokyo. The film gives about as little consideration to the women’s thoughts and feelings as Marty (that’s not to mention Marty’s mother who he still lives with too, played by a wasted Fran Drescher). Where Uncut Gems is appropriately mean, Marty Supreme is too nice, putting a neat button on everything in the end, on-the-nose Tears for Fears needle drop and all, and making it plain that this film wasn’t really critiquing Marty or his approach to life after all (there’s a layering of a specific sound over the finale that does make me question if we are meant to apply a more slyly cynical reading to the conclusion, but I also don’t think the rest of the film puts in the work to merit that).
That’s not to say Marty Supreme isn’t wildly entertaining, moving at a kinetic clip even thought its length is definitely felt (it is far too drawn out for a movie that is really only hammering home one point over and over again). Safdie’s penchant for shoving his characters into unfathomably stressful situations and allowing them to build to (sometimes literally) explosive outcomes while hitting all the uncomfortable humor that accompanies such absurd story beats makes for riveting cinema. The film is aided by some stellar production values, from the production design by the legendary Jack Fisk and 35 mm cinematography by Darius Khondji that brings 50s New York City to vivid life, to Daniel Lopatin’s (another previous Safdie collaborator) pulsing electronic score that matches the narrative’s pace while suggesting a parallel between Marty and the spike in consumerism and excess that accompanied the economic boom in the 1980s. Even the ping pong matches are bracingly cinematic, the camera staying just close enough to the action to allow the audience to follow the ball as well as both players, and cutting to reactive close-ups when the action pauses. But right down to its wild opening credits match cut, it too often feels like Safdie is taking a scattershot approach to the same ideas he so much more skillfully communicated in Uncut Gems. It isn’t that I mind following a blatantly terrible person around for over two hours. It’s more that I wish I had a sense that I wasn’t following a blatantly terrible person around for over two hours who got to pat himself on the back at the end instead.
Marty Supreme is now playing in theaters. Runtime: 150 minutes. Rated R.
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