Timothée Chalamet in Marty Supreme (Photo – A24)
Two hours of Marty Supreme, with its titular character running, scheming, and lying, should have left me exhausted. Yet, I walked out of the theater on a rainy Pasadena afternoon, nearly exhilarated.
Marty Supreme
Directed by Josh Safdie – 2025
Reviewed by Garrett Rowlan
To be sure, the movie follows a tried-and-true, heart-tugging formula: the young man with a big dream of athletic success, this time, in table tennis. But the film undercuts that premise with the wheedling and abject compromises of its main character, Marty Mauser. At times, he really is a louse. And as much as you want him to succeed, you almost hope someone slaps him.
Indeed, in one scene, he is paddled on his rear, but by that point, you only feel sorry for him as he grovels and submits to humiliation in exchange for a chance at redemption.
The film takes place over nine months in 1952 and depicts the ping-pong parlors in New York, where Marty defeats all comers but cannot top a Japanese opponent in the film’s quarter-turn. His desperate missteps and the inevitable rematch make up the remaining three-quarters of the story.
The choice of ping-pong as the vehicle for greatness is ironic. Despite Marty’s wildly inaccurate dreams of table tennis someday filling stadiums, we know he is destined to be no more than a big fish in a small pond of ping-pong fanatics.
I kept thinking of a similar film, The Hustler, with Paul Newman in 1961, in which Newman’s Eddie Felson learns to be hard-hearted in order to defeat Minnesota Fats (played memorably by Jackie Gleason). Marty’s journey, however, isn’t about gaining a hard shell, but about finding a human soul, a journey summarized in contrasting shots of Marty in motion.
In one scene, Marty escapes from a window and runs desperately down the street, his shirt unbuttoned, going right to left from the audience’s perspective. Near the end of the film, he is buttoned up and walks with a calmness in his step, the direction reversed, now going left to right across the screen. Whether the filmmakers intended this contrast as a sign of the character’s growth, I’m not sure. But it’s to their credit that the staging invites such speculation.
As for the cast, Timothée Chalamet is excellent as Marty, fully immersing himself in the role. His flailing style of ping-pong contrasts with the robotic way Tom Hanks played in Forrest Gump. I believed in his growth, hard-won through misadventure. Gwyneth Paltrow, as an aging Hollywood star, is good too. Most of all, I enjoyed the film’s minor characters, the denizens of the New York bars and parlors, with their lived-in faces that had an almost gargoyle-like resonance.
The film also reminded me of 2024’s Anora, especially in its East Coast setting. I thought that was the best film of the year, and Marty Supreme is right up there.
> Playing at Landmark Pasadena Playhouse, Regal Paseo, IPIC Theaters, Regency Academy Cinemas, Regal Edwards Alhambra Renaissance, AMC Santa Anita 16, AMC Atlantic Times Square 14, Regal UA La Canada, AMC The Americana at Brand 18 and Laemmle Glendale.
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