United States, 2025
Directed by Josh Safdie
With Timothée Chalamet (Marty Mauser), Odessa A’Zion (Rachel Mizler), Gwyneth Paltrow (Kay Stone), Kevin O’Leary (Milton Rockwell), Tyler the Creator (Wally), Kawaguchi Koto (Endo Koto), Abel Ferrara (Ezra Mishkin)
He looks hard-pressed, dead serious, and a tad bored. Walking through the shop briskly, handling the boxes firmly, talking with that smiling self-assurance conveying soothing persuasion though with a rough edge, the young man, whose thin features and even thinner spectacles, are framed in throbbing closeups, could be a poster boy for the efficient shopkeeper, even if something in the eye suggests not just a mere cockiness but an odd impatience with the job. Anyway, it is not surprising the old fellow in the desk is so pleased to hand him the professional visiting card he made printed for this energetic shoe salesman who turns out to be his nephew, letters proclaiming Marty Mauser the manager of the family-owned business.
But Marty Mauser welcomes the offer seething with anger and bitterly complaining – before rushing in the space where shoes are stored for a steamy encounter with a young lady who showed up a moment earlier.
In the Jewish community of the 1952 New York, 23-year old Marty Mauser stands out, and wants to. He is not interested in having the quiet if tedious life of many others, focused on hard work in serious businesses and the hallowed family. Coming from a very small family unit – no father in sight, perhaps dead, the film does not provide much background, a worried and dissatisfied mother a phone conversation right away shows he does not really love much and does not respect hugely, no sibling, and just that old uncle in an annoying paternalistic addition – the eager young guy does not care for work and clearly views love as just a sexual urge to satisfy. What matters to him is to play table tennis, to become an ace in this field, to make it a big thing in the United States, just as it is already the case in Asia, with Marty Mauser the undisputed champion and chief promoter. A friend of his is already busy creating special balls to be hopefully massively sold, and of course cleverly marketed to highlight Marty Mauser.
Since he has little money to tour the world and take part in key competitions and that so far the sport does not exactly turn on folks of his community and the wider America, it is another talent than dizzying sporting agility and endurance Marty Mauser must use to achieve his goal. So trailing this brash lead means actually to scrutinize a walking chutzpah, and a redefined one at that. His no holds barred gift of the gab is ruthlessly and implausibly used to talk people into doing what he wants or fancies and to a shameless self-aggrandizement that in his mind is carelessly conflated with the wider aim of making table tennis more popular and in fact the sport itself – when sexual fantasies are not to steal the show on the spur of the moment. Anybody can be a target as anybody can provide, one way or another, the dough, the opportunity, the helping hand, or just the relief and shelter Mary Mauser needs in his rake’s progress which is going to be quite frantic and messy, landing him into mind-boggling situations, some of them really absurd but with real risk and danger involved, and the more emotional turning out not to be around a table but dealing with the kind of sentiments he has never wanted to embrace.
The mayhem this narrative arc is stems of course of the unavoidable clash between his self-absorbed and shady mind and what are the rules of the game of life, between his solipsistic worldview fueled by nerve and arrogance and the egos and rationales of the people he deals with, between an impossible desire to succeed on his own terms and the actual challenge of ever carving up enough safe and sound space in the way of the world just to be alive and pleased. This perpetual clash is a perpetual motion that indeed sets in motion a film entirely constructed around his face and his agitation: he runs a lot and the camera tracks him as speedily and thrillingly as possible. His increasingly desperate energy is the essence of a jittery and snazzy film staging with gusto and fun how for every step forward Marty Mauser makes in his pursuit to make it he is compelled subsequently to take another one in a worse direction.
This exhausting race, which never disheartens the wiry boy, takes the audience both in the seedy streets and in high society. Marty Mauser remains grounded in the sections of the Big Apple where struggle the minorities – not just the Jews, but also the African Americans, and his favorite place to train and to make money with his sporting talent is run by a benevolent old Black while his best pal he enrolls in a crazy night of swindles is a younger Black driving a cab, the zesty Wally – and where thrives the underworld, though the case exhibited, grouchy and vicious dog-lover Ezra Mishkin, the origin of a stunning and important subplot, rather shows how lousy bad guys’ lives are.
But his participation to a big competition in London makes him notice another kind of woman than the nice brunette he had sex with so recklessly at the start, Rachel Mizler. He falls for a British retired movie star who used to be feted in the 1930s, Kay Stone. The elegant middle-aged lady is no dupe of the glib and cheeky New Yorker but still spends a night with him. It could have remained inconsequential – except that one, she is married to a rich businessman, Milton Rockwell, who could be the kind of badly needed sponsor for a young sporting talent, and that, two, she decides to restart her acting career by playing a play in New York (the screenplay trick is a bit too smart). If the adventures with Wally and, on a more extended and violent mode with Ezra Mishkin, delivered silly and slapstick moments giving nevertheless Marty Mauser’s progress a sinister edge, a sense of chaos that may well bury (literally) all hopes and ambitions, the dealings with the star and even more with the businessman emphasize cruelly what implies differences in social status and what power means. Far more soberly than his absurd brushes with street violence, the clash between Marty Mauser and the world of wealth, especially embodied by such an unforgiving and forbidding personality as Milton Rockwell, would teach him bitter lessons. Humiliation is actually his ultimate passport.
It could be argued that the writing was on the wall. Getting too rude, too provocative, too selfish has been courting disaster all along, and shamelessly turning gaffes into further dubious and contrived arguments for his views and into blunt selling points, has been a more than valid reason to be resented. But then there is that finale in Japan, when Marty Mauser plays against the ace who beat him so handsomely in London, becoming a star and a symbol of rebirth in his native country still ostracized after the egregious war crimes it committed, Endo Koto. The game is just an advertising tool for Milton Rockwell’s business, an exhibition that should end with a convenient celebration of the local hero. But the pride of Marty Mauser, his own resentment, his conviction he is anyway the best table tennis player in the world would take the story into an unexpected direction, a great sequence of sport for the silver screen, a belated triumph that the reconciliation with Rachel Mizler who has just delivered a baby he is certainly the father takes to another level, the victory of a man who has just not proved his point but is accepting to grow up better in the way.
No comeuppance but an old fashioned happy ending, including maudlin shots in a maternity ward, jarring with the pure excitement and visual virtuosity displayed in the reconstructed Japan: “Marty Supreme” falls back on the kind of reliable and relatable images and tropes the audience may be longing for after nearly two and a half hours of upsetting bu absorbing events centered on a lead character striving to be hero but having nothing heroic, a nice guy who is anything but pleasant, a young talent that gets overboard and underwhelmed. Hilarious and thrilling even as it pictured pathetic and grotesque moves and a sickening and self-destructive chutzpah, the film baffles yet impresses.
Tuned both to the era’s pop songs and the hits of the 1980s (where other wholly different musics are not thrown in for good measure), it looks like an entertainment dangerously warped under the sheer impact of its frenzy, velocity, and messy story but with an energy that keeps it scurrying and surprising – and lead actor Timothée Chalamet’s roguishly juvenile but clever face drives the move handsomely, anchoring the film to make it even more compelling. It is also helps it revisits the ideal narrative of the self-made-man, the American winning over against the odds and despite their flaws, with an astonishing and inspired lead actor delving deep in the contradictions and the illusions of his role which arguably are also the true colors of the storied success of the individual self the Americans enjoy too readily to believe.