By Matthew Moorcroft

Highest Recommendation

• Directed by Josh Safdie
• Starring Timothee Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Odessa A’zion, Kevin O’Leary
• R

Marty Mauser has a dream. He wants to not just a champion, but THE champion; a name to be remembered by history and the rest of the world. A tall order, and it’s for table tennis no less, a sport that at this point in history was only starting to get some level of popularity and respect. But Marty doesn’t care, he wants to win damnit and he will do anything to get to that point. And like all ambition, there is a cost to be paid, whether it be personal or professional. Nothing comes free. Nothing is forever.

The films of the Safdies, whether it be them as a duo or them as separate entities, are all obsessed with the idea behind winning and losing. Being beaten or beating whatever it is in front of you. In the case of Marty Supreme, which doubles down on Uncut Gems‘ frantic pace and escalation by taking those brief moments of focus on sports and turning it into the main story focus of the picture, that idea is expanded on and brought to it’s fullest limit by showing a man who only believes he can succeed in life if he has “won”. Whatever winning means.

Electric throughout and never letting up for a single second, Marty Supreme is a triumph of propulsive cinema; impossible to look away from, easy to get lost in, and one of those rare movies you just want to lose yourself in for hours and hours on end. The movie Marty Supreme is honestly a lot like the character of Marty Mauser himself – always on the run with a thousand different things going on at once but with a singular, intentional goal and destination that he refuses to look away from. And once that goal gets closer in view, the more things seem to get more complicated, darker, and more difficult for Marty to accept.

As we follow Marty throughout nine months of his life – which is bookended by the conception and birth of his eventual child – we see his strengths, his flaws, and his general lease on life unfold naturally. Timothee Chalamet has the impossible task of making this larger then life, and sometimes impossibly unlikable, figure into a person to root for, and Chalamet is more then up to the challenge in the role that will likely define the rest of his career. A towering, spectacular performance that dominates the screen to the point where you lose Chalamet and only ever see Marty himself, and it’s all in his physicality, the way he never seems to be able to stop himself from moving or sitting still longer then a couple of seconds at a time. Even in his lowest points, he maintains that almost mouse like quality in his movements and his blabbering mouth, composed in his arrogance and confidence in a way that you can’t help but like him in spite of his clearly manipulative nature.

But just like Uncut Gems or Good Time, everyone else is almost as amoral as Marty himself, whether that be the aging actress Kay Stone who uses Marty as a coping tool away from her own unhappy life, her husband Rockwell who is a business tycoon that’s capitalism’s worst impulses on display, or the countless smaller characters that we meet across Marty’s increasingly hectic journey for glory. And just like Marty, all of them have depth of character and layers of ideas baked into them. Marty Supreme feels so lived in and real in it’s character dynamics and setting that it’s easy to mistake it for a biopic; that Marty Mauser was indeed a real person who existed and did everything that you see on screen and interacted with everyone you see here.

Partly that’s due to the excellent technical work on display here, whether it be the large scale production design that transports you back to the 1950s with ease or Darius Khondji’s phenomenal 35mm cinematography that has texture for days. All of it gives Marty Supreme a level of detail in it’s presentation that’s beyond Safdie’s prior work to this point, and in some ways it wouldn’t feel out of place in the director driven wave of the 70s in how much of it is presented. The only thing that certainly is more modern then that is Daniel Lopatin’s excellent score, which uses techniques from throughout time (it feels indebted to the 80s and 90s mostly though) to craft a unique electronica score that also has choir, trumpets, and high caliber jazz infused into it’s sound. It’s unlike anything you have ever heard and certainly one of the best scores you’ll hear in movie theaters at the moment.

And by the time Marty Supreme reaches it’s climax, a beautiful 15 minute match sequence that has killer editing and musical timing followed by a stellar epilogue and final shot that leaves you with a ton to chew on, you are completely satisfied and somehow still want more. Like the best of it’s ilk, Marty Supreme demands you return to it as soon as possible, almost like the table tennis that Marty loves playing. You just can’t get enough of it, even when it’s beating you down at it’s worst. It’s for the love of the game, after all.