Director: Josh Safdie
Stars: Timothée Chalamet, Odessa A’zion, Abel Ferrara
If the press tour for Marty Supreme has seen star Timothée Chalamet seesaw between the words in the term “charm offensive”, you should see how his character conducts himself. Set in 1952, Josh Safdie’s anarchic sprawler concerns 23-year-old table tennis prodigy Marty Mauser (loosely based on historic sportsman Marty Reisman), and his efforts to compete in the world championships being held in Tokyo. Getting there is the problem. The sport has no standing in the US and for all his ability to talk big, Marty’s (Chalamet) just a kid from New York who folks struggle to take seriously. His philosophy of living only for the moment – skimming across the surface of things – has him in the position of always being indebted to someone. He’s a born hustler, plain and simple. Brimming with a cocksure self-belief, he’ll run his mouth for his own amusement before acknowledging the consequences.
Chalamet’s tendency to bring these elements of the character into his real world interviews and appearances isn’t so much another instance of a precocious actor taking themselves too seriously (although Chalamet is begging to be taken seriously), but perhaps evidence that the line between star and character isn’t so far in this case. Chalamet’s credited as a producer here, and every scene of Marty Supreme is an opportunity for him to court glory. Fortunately it is about the best the 30-year-old actor has ever been.
Since brother Benny also spent the last couple of years ferrying us wrestling biopic The Smashing Machine, there’s been a general assumption or expectation that Marty Supreme is Josh’s contemporaneous sports picture. It is about table tennis, here and there, but more commonly this is a retread of the run-and-gun scams that have typified past works like Heaven Knows What, Good Time and Uncut Gems. If Marty Supreme lacks the nervous anxiety of those pictures, it redresses the balance with something approaching goofy optimism. While firmly rooted in the ’50s, the soundtrack is peppered with soft-rock anthems of the ’70s and ’80s, redolent of misty-eyed America that could achieve anything. Like him or loathe him – and it’s easy to go either way – there’s something irrepressible about Marty that Safdie is keen to lionise.
And so to the sprawl of the picture. Running – often literally – to a bloated 150 minutes, there’s a fair argument to be made that there’s a scam too many in Marty Supreme. As an awards contender, it feels slightly in conversation with last year’s cause célèbre Anora, depicting a scrappy youth who’ll do more or less anything to make it in an unfeeling world that’ll make ’em dance for its own amusement. In Marty’s case, he latches on to ink magnate Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary) as his potential ticket to Japan, but Rockwell quickly comes to represent the perverse greed of America’s fat cats, and a scene in which the multi-millionaire makes a deal contingent on Marty literally bending over obliterates any subtext. Just as well Marty’s balling his actress wife Kay (Gwyneth Paltrow).
But the love of Marty’s life is Rachel (Odessa A’zion), his bestie since they were eight year olds, now pregnant with his love child, and every bit the neighbourhood con artist Marty is. It’s a slight shame that Marty Supreme is so much the Chalamet show. There are wonderful characters and performances in his orbit that, thanks to the breathless pace of this thing, barely get a look-in. Rachel is a fine case in point. The two of them are great together, the amateurish nature of their schemes matched by the blind resolve that it’s all gonna work out.
If Marty Supreme is a mite overpacked with twits, turns and bathtubs crashing through ceilings (what a sequence that is!), it gets away with a lot of these excesses through sheer technical tour de force. Master cinematographer Darius Khondji keeps the frame buzzing with electricity. As murky as Safdie’s vision of ’50s New York gets )and this is a film that richly enjoys shadows) the relentless movement of the picture carries it – and us – through thick and thin. This is high energy cinema, propulsive and involving. Even if it is, ultimately, a little exhausting.
Even taking into account the ballsy serves (those opening credits…), a menacingly chaotic guest turn from Abel Ferrara (of course) and Chalamet’s naked demand for Oscar™‘s attention, Marty Supreme teeters on the over-familiar from Safdie. But maybe this isn’t so much a remix of the terrain he’s shown himself well-versed in, but a further revision of it. Some of the great masters worked the same ground over and over again, honing, whittling, perfecting. So it feels here. Hustler culture isn’t done with Safdie. He needs to shape it some more, keep sculpting ’til what’s showing is most expressive of the feelings inside. And while there could’ve been a shade more whittling this time around, the largess matches the subject, and this is among the more giving efforts in Safdie’s body of work.
On a technical level, he’s approaching the overall proficiency and razzmatazz of Paul Thomas Anderson at the peak of his powers. As the promotional materials for the movie attest, you gotta “dream big”. That usually requires alotta arrogance, alotta gusto, alotta what Marty’s got going on as he charges down the street, cops behind him and another opportunity ahead. You can’t keep an infuriatingly overconfident white kid down.
The Lost Highway Hotel 