Marty Supreme

9.5/10 - “Not a lot of people know this, but Timothée Chalamet is the first actor in history to have to put on muscle for a movie about Ping-Pong.. He gained over 60 ounces."

Timothée Chalamet plays Marty Mauser, a young, blindly ambitious table tennis player and part-time hustler desperate to engrave his name into history. Mauser will stop at nothing, and I emphasise nothing, in order to attend the Table Tennis World Championships. Hailing from an impoverished Jewish New York background, Mauser has immense talent with his paddle but even more skill with weaselling himself into women, out of tough situations and finding unique ways to acquire cash, then losing it.

Mauser has one singular goal: to become the best in the world in table tennis, and his journey to get there rivals Odysseus’ perilous voyage to Ithaca. It is a genuinely stupefying tale of a man who tramples on everyone he knows and leaves them in utter chaos, which will leave you shocked, appalled and stunned. If one were to retell Mauser’s tale from start to finish, it would be scoffed at, and in reality, the story itself is ludicrous. But therein lies the joy of Marty Supreme. Every twist and turn is unpredictable, and when you think things cannot get any worse, Mauser and the world around him keep finding ways to make it shockingly worse. His journey skids across the social spectrum, with him crashing through halfway houses, stealing money from mobsters and sneaking into high-falutin’ parties of the wealthy. Like the game of table tennis, Mauser’s life is fast-paced, intense and chaotic.

Can we just stop for a second to praise table tennis? It is such an interesting sport that is highly accessible to most people and is equally enjoyable to watch as it is to play. I was thinking only recently that it is a weird sport in that I love it, but never seek it out. But if it is on the TV or I see people playing it in a park, I will stop and watch, and watch and watch. This is a lot easier to do when watching it at home on a screen than in the park. I have no idea why a lone adult male staring in parks is so frowned upon, and the police are called. Beyond me. Anyway, I digress.

Mauser is an utter pest. Immediately, you identify that he is a smarmy, selfish, opportunistic young man who you would like to slap some manners into. He sets himself above everyone around him. He sees people as utilities that can get him closer to his goal, and his lack of self-consciousness enables him to drop people once they no longer have any use for him. This terrible character trait will constantly keep biting him in the backside, yet he refuses to play ball with anyone around him. He takes the view that it is Marty’s world and we are living in it. His ambition and self-belief cause him to openly declare to another character that his life has meaning and a destiny, while theirs do not. He is audacious, rude, impulsive, full of himself and annoyingly persistent.

Mauser is such an abrasive figure. He is so hard to fathom and to like, but there is something about him that you still love. He has this charm that is hard to ignore. He is able to sweet-talk himself out of almost any situation as well as sweet-talk his way into women’s hearts. His ambition and self-belief are infectious. Many of the people around him follow him, not because they like him but because they want to be propelled into a better life. They naturally gravitate towards someone who is unquestionably determined to overcome his challenges and achieve greatness, and they want a slice of it too. His daring to dream causes people to gravitate towards him. They follow him the way a comet’s tail follows its path, not by choice, but by gravity. Despite being so awful to everyone, and I mean everyone, he also has an intensity of focus towards them all. If it is Marty’s world and he is on the stage, he is able to make anyone feel that he is only staring, or performing, to them in a sea of others.

He is also exceptionally talented as a table tennis player. Chalamet does a spectacular job showcasing immense skills that would have taken ages to develop. Deep down, we want to see people like him succeed. We want sportspeople to give it their all, and hell, Mauser gives his all and then some. Simply put, he is a dreamer. And for that, you have to respect him. You love to hate him, and while you want him to win, you also want to see him fail in the process.

While the film is quite long and foremost focused on Mauser, it also importantly fleshes out many of the characters that surround Marty. Each and every character has a story to tell, and while we only get it in small glimpses between the chaos Mauser exhibits, it enables the film to feel deeply layered. For example, Odessa A’zion, who plays Mauser’s childhood friend and secret lover Rachel Mizler, is a character with a number of dimensions. She rides in tandem with Mauser for a lot of the film with the hope that she, too, can escape her impoverished lifestyle. She is unhappily married and desperate for a thrilling life, and her actions throughout the film are dictated by this ambition. She begins to hustle, lie and steal in order to break her cycle of misery. While she is in love with Mauser, she is arguably in love with the idea of him as well as the opportunities his sheer presence can provide her in the future.

Gwyneth Paltrow plays Kay Stone, a retired actress now turned socialite who also gravitates towards Mauser. In her case, she does not have any affection for him but sees his youth and ambition as a reminder of her earlier career. She laments that she has ‘settled’ and no longer acts. She is disgusted by Mauser and his actions, but she regularly overlooks these as a small win against her commanding husband. Stone’s husband, Milton Rockwell, played by Kevin O’Leary, is a wealthy businessman. He is cast as the antagonist for parts of the film. However, in reality, he is hardly the bad guy. Again, he has dimensions that change and are hard to interpret. He sees a business opportunity with Mauser, but is rebuffed. He also harbours suspicions about Mauser and his wife. In a later scene, Rockwell publicly humiliates Mauser, but he does so because he is sick of arrogant people mocking him and his dead son and then trying to weasel back into a deal that had soured.

Interestingly, O’Leary in Marty Supreme looks remarkably like President Harry S Truman, the US leader who ordered the atomic bomb attacks on Japan. I know this was not by accident, as there is a heavy theme of Japan throughout the film. Even to cast and costume someone to look like him and place him in post-war Japan creates fascinating dynamics to unpack and ruminate on. Finally, one minor character is given several minutes to retell an incredible story from his time in Auschwitz. This is the only flashback in the film, and it further extends our interest in the character and the story. This flashback is strange, too. It gives Saltburn a run for its money…

Curiously, Marty Supreme is littered with a dozen synth-laden 1980s prog rock songs. We hear tracks like Change by Tears for Fears, Forever Young by Alphaville, I Have the Touch by Peter Gabriel, and Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometime by The Korgis, among many others. There is a stellar score that holds the film together and matches its chaotic and heart-racing tone. But why are all the songs 1980s ballads? In part, these songs are about youth and coming of age. But I think another reason is to relay the idea that Marty Mauser, and to a lesser extent Rachel, are 1980s kids living in a 1950s world. I do not mean that literally. They did not travel through time. But they certainly do not have the same attitudes and demeanour expected from young people in the 1950s. They talk over each other. They are rude and vulgar. They lie, cheat and steal. Yes, I know those things happened back then, but it’s about the vibes! They both seize the day in the same way Ferris Bueller does. They see the world around them and dismiss its rigidity and reject its need for decorum. They want to take shortcuts in flashy style and exude a level of confidence that simply was not common in the early fifties. Yes, there was hope on the horizon, but on the proviso that you did the hard work, respected your elders and maintained an unhealthy amount of stoicism. Mauser and Mizler do not. They want success immediately, and on several occasions, quick cash too. They conduct themselves with the aspirations of the Reagan era, and they are far more casual in the way they carry themselves. Overall, the combination of 1980s music and an engaging score only serves to enliven Marty Supreme even more.

Finally, I want to highlight the attention to detail in Marty Supreme. After watching several Netflix films where everything looks pristine and barely worn, it was refreshing to see a film that went the extra mile to achieve a solid level of realism. For example, when Mauser plays table tennis, he slowly takes off his cardigan, then his tie. He constantly adjusts his trousers. As the games progress, Mauser’s skin begins to glow with a sheen of sweat and then, later, droplets. When he faces a tough opponent and struggles to maintain his composure, his hair keeps falling over his forehead, only for him to adjust it again, and the same with his glasses.

Due to Chalamet being on a red-hot run of films for the last few years, I have become accustomed to what his face looks like. (I KNOW THAT SOUNDS WEIRD)(Trust me, it is not.) In almost every film, he has smooth, perfect skin. (Okay, that does sound quite Hannibal Lectery…) In Marty Supreme, however, he has dozens of tiny indentations and scars. In fact, I am confident that in Mauser’s youth, he had really bad acne and that his face still bears the scars of it. This small, yet important detail gives us ammunition to better understand Mauser. Secondly, there is a lingering shot of Mizler’s hands late in the film. It shows her long nails that were once nice and white but have yellowed, cracked and worn down by the life she has led. She has dirt under her fingernails. These small and subtle decisions help the audience see more of her background and thus her desperation to leave it. Why could they not have done that for Where the Crawdads Sing???

To conclude, this film blew me away. I have been absolutely wowed by the tumultuous and unpredictable nature of the story, which is wild and impressive. But I am even more impressed with the level of care and detail that has gone into making Marty Supreme. It is rightfully a beefy movie worthy of praise, silverware and many rewatches to come.

9.5 out of 10