Josh Safdie’s latest film, Marty Supreme, is a 149-minute marathon sprint of gonzo calamities, unfolding with the fanatical energy of a solo ping pong rally. The sociopathic screwball nightmare replaces gags with detonations of bad taste, cinephile allusions, and alpha-male cameos in a farcical race against time where no one seems to need food or sleep.
Timothée Chalamet stars as Marty Mauser, a spindly, fast-talking hustler loosely based on the real-life 1950s table tennis champion Marty “The Needle” Reisman. In 1952 New York, Marty works in a shoe shop while dreaming of global success in the burgeoning sport. He’s also developing his own brand of ball, the “Marty Supreme,” and carrying on an affair with his married childhood sweetheart, Rachel (Odessa A’zion).
After saving up his earnings, Marty travels to London for the table tennis championships at Wembley. Once there, the brash American deliberately shocks British journalists with crass jokes about his friend and fellow player Béla (Géza Röhrig), a Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor. After hustling a free room at the Ritz, Marty develops an erotic obsession with a fellow guest, the retired movie star Kay Stone, played in a stylish return to the screen by Gwyneth Paltrow. However, his ambitions are thwarted by his disastrous match against Japanese superstar Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi) and the bigotry of Kay’s husband and potential sponsor, Milton (Kevin O’Leary). The film then descends into a non-stop meltdown as Marty frantically tries to claw together the cash for a rematch.
The film is punctuated by audacious and disorienting setpieces, including a shocking scene of corporal punishment and a particularly memorable sequence in a grimy hotel room involving Chalamet, a dog, a bathtub, and a walk-on role for cult director Abel Ferrara.
Marty Supreme’s absurdist effect stems from its subversion of the sports movie genre. It features no training montages, no wise mentors, and no moments of technical explanation. Unlike a character like Forrest Gump, who achieved celebrity through the sport, Marty remains a reprehensible figure whom no one trusts. The film is not about table tennis so much as it embodies the sport’s rhythm and spirit; the mesmerizing, dizzying back-and-forth is embedded in the DNA of every scene.
Chalamet delivers a hilarious performance as an unstoppable live-wire, powered by indignation and self-pity. Paltrow provides a witty and clever counterweight to his thrumming narcissism, portraying Kay as an amusing and sensual woman who understands Marty better than he understands himself.
The relentless pace, constant jabbering desperation, and the protagonist’s supercharged neediness create a disorienting experience. Yet, amidst the cascading catastrophes and stunts, the pint-sized hero always manages to bounce back, ultimately achieving a poignant kind of maturity in the final shot. The film’s pure, unadulterated craziness is a marvel to behold.
