Marty Supreme is Josh Safdie's second solo feature after 2008's The Pleasures Of Being Robbed
Timothee Chalamet plays a ping-pong champion aspirant who will stop at anything to actualise his ambition
Chalamet is the Best Actor frontrunner at the Oscars.
In Josh Safdie’s whip-smart, endlessly enthralling Marty Supreme, ambition is exaggerated, derided and capitalised. As Timothée Chalamet’s Marty Mauser steamrolls his heedless way towards ping-pong conquest, it’s to view ambition being corroded as well as the ground beneath crumble. Set in 1952, the film introduces him at the plunge itself. He takes off from a modest family shoe store job and heads into tournaments, losing ultimately to his arch Japanese rival Koto Endo. These beats, that would otherwise hog the entirety of a standard-issue sports drama, are dispensed with in the early stretches here. Safdie is more perceptive to individual spirit, subtly investigating cultures and epistemes that propel scores of Martys. It’s as intoxicating to observe as its ruthlessness will also wear you. But Chalamet’s character isn’t one to baulk or back off as the more unlikely his dreams seem to morph.
The impossibly front-footed Marty isn’t someone you’d like to cross paths with. His ambition is so blinding, all-encompassing it destroys and cannibalises all stepping into his snare. He’s an effortless charmer, a swindler so passionate he infects some of his own self-assurance. Marty knows not when to stop, how to. To do so would be encountering reality. He unleashes the gale-force of his will as the bulwark to ram him forth. The fantasy of utter, maddening self-belief becomes his engine, never slowing or spitting at hollow punctures. For Marty to mull, it’d be to confront what he may well be denying to himself. He believes his talent is enough to launch him as far as conceivable, land wherever desired.
Marty Supreme pulsates with so much verve and drive you might grasp for breath. It desists from mournful meditations, but slants in reproachful critique without being ponderous. You witness Marty being slammed, implicitly castigated for the very ideals he’s been historically endowed with. Safdie has designed a rollicking film whose systemic fury slyly pokes through frantic resolve. Marty is so confident it blazes the entire room, stings and inevitably amuses. Chalamet’s galvanising performance glues us through rounds, disruptions and unending abasement. Right when Marty thinks his dreams are within reach, it slips out. His ascent is at the whims of elite, fascist and capitalist America. Luxuries are only borrowed and casually cast aside. The screenplay, which Safdie co-wrote with his regular, Ronald Bronstein, is perfectly attuned to the depravity of dreams being continually smashed. Marty embodies the great American dream in its gaping abscesses. Myths of transcending hierarchies have likewise been sold to him, emboldening him to keep pushing forward only to plummet through bigger holes. This is manifest in the business tycoon Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary) and his wife Kay (Gwyneth Paltrow), both of whom he courts for profit and pleasure. This is a film about leaping so inexorably high you lose your bearings and get singed like Icarus.
Marty's cocky recklessness understands only triumph and what it takes to get there. He's so determined surging ahead, winning, his moral compass seems already broken. Marty's narcissism knows no bounds. Chalamet keeps the energy going. It's a merciless portrait of young, burning ambition led by a high-strung character fixated upon a single purpose. Family and responsibility are dumped at the altar of claiming trophies. He evades Rachel (a canny Odessa A’zion), who’s carrying his child, returning to her for brief spells post-defeat and only when she can be of use. He forgets Rachel for months while being as swift in extracting favours. Rachel might initially strike as a pushover till she flashes how much she weaponizes the skewed relationship as co-dependency. Neither does he see them as casualties. He stamps forth, hustling through sponsorships.
His hubris doesn't pause before pulverising everyone else. He has no time for reflection or contrition. To be in his orbit is to lay oneself bare to endless manipulation. If his darting gaze falls on any, it's a selfish motive. Neither Safdie nor Chalamet is interested in softening Marty with compassion. He’s heady on the class mobility success seduces with. Safdie opens in New York, vrooms Marty through the world and brings him back for confrontation and release. Is there compunction? The ending grants Marty a moving magnitude, a soul that can also be tender and not as always vigorously relentless. But does it mean a complete spiritual swerve? What you choose to side with depends on how much Marty’s glibness has rubbed in. Can he be even capable of switching to softer instincts?
Marty Supreme shoots a lance at the perverse spectacle built around ambition. At no point does Safdie celebrate or exult in Marty’s misadventures. He’s schooled for being a child, but Chalamet plays him with such irresistible arrogance you’re immediately swept off. This is an actor who can make you root for and be repulsed by his work in shockingly speedy succession. This is a film about mirages yet the faint glimmers of reality crashing through delusion are unmistakable. But perhaps, the strongest weapon in its arsenal is Daniel Lopatin’s miraculous 80s synth score, which renews, widens and expands in one unbreakable magnificent loop. It floods Marty’s journey, wedges his soaring sense of destination to effects that send you to stunned new heights. It’s an unbelievable travesty Lopatin’s score has been snubbed at the Oscars. Nevertheless, it’ll boom through long after many Martys come and go.
