In the superficially entertaining Marty Supreme, Timothee Chalamet plays Marty Mauser, a young 1950s New Yorker obsessed by an imagined future that everyone else finds most unlikely. Marty sees his path to fame and fortune as becoming a world ping pong champion, elevating the sport and monetizing his competitive success. This is not a delusion, because Marty is good enough to compete at the highest level, ping pong was a rising sport, and world champs can garner money from sponsorships and merchandising. All Marty has to do is to bend everyone else to his will – and, ay, there’s the rub.
(In the 1950s, ping pong was generally thought of as a game one played at summer camp, so no other character thinks that Marty’s dream is possible. But, the Marty Mauser character is based on a real guy, Marty Reisman.)
Narcissism and irascibility is a bad combination. Marty sees every human interaction in light of how it can advance his dream, and he’s always ready to embrace mendacity and disloyalty to hurdle an obstacle. Accordingly, he leaves a wake of burned bridges in his wake. The humor in Marty Supreme stems from his ridiculous entitlement and the outrageous lengths to which he will go.
Marty lives life at a frenetic pace, and director Josh Safdie, as he did in Uncut Gems, has the audience frantically keeping pace. It’s a two-and-a-half hour movie, but it feels substantially shorter.
Chalamet is very good at playing monomania, as he showed in A Complete Unknown, and he’s fun to watch here. Gwyneth Paltrow is excellent as a jaded former movie star. So is Odessa A’zion as Marty’s childhood friend, who at first seems like a victim, but turns out to equal Marty in moxie and resourcefulness.
I’ve read that Chalamet trained in ping pong for four years, and his ping pong skills are impressive. The ping pong scenes are mostly shown in long sot, with both players’ full bodies visible, so Chalamet is performing the sport without a double. It’s high level ping pong, and one scene where Marty and a partner are showing off with trick shots is especially cool. (BTW I know my ping pong, having once been a serious player, and even having played a match against someone from the US team’s 1971 ping pong diplomacy trip to China.)
Marty Supreme enjoys a very high Metacritic rating and some Oscar buzz. It is certainly well-crafted, but I didn’t like it that much. MILD SPOILER: I think the problem is, after watching Marty think of no one but himself and treat everyone else badly for two hours plus, I didn’t buy the final 90 seconds,in which Marty finally cares about another human.