The House Article | “Memorable and disturbing”: Gordon McKee reviews ‘Marty Supreme’

Timothée Chalamet as Marty Mauser | Image by: LANDMARK MEDIA / Alamy

4 min read51 min

Oscar-nominated Marty Supreme is not the film I thought it was going to be.

I went in expecting a film with the gratifying arc of an athlete honing his craft, overcoming adversity and reaching the summit of his ambitions.

This assumption was reinforced by the presence of Timothée Chalamet himself. An actor who treats his profession much as you imagine Cristiano Ronaldo treats football: as a vocation demanding total commitment in pursuit of lasting greatness.

That spirit certainly animates Marty Supreme, but it feels less like a portrait of a sporting champion, and more the excoriating tale of an addict.

Marty Mauser, Chalamet’s character and the film’s namesake, is willing to do anything in pursuit of the stage. And it is a stage.

What ultimately makes the film work is Chalamet’s charm

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Mauser is a supremely talented table tennis player, but his drive is not the technicalities of a fast-paced sport. The film follows his escapades as he tries to fund his way to the World Championships in Tokyo. There is no training montage. He is not pursuing the title. He is pursuing the platform.

What drives the character is the performance of a championship match. The showboating; the cheers; the electricity of being watched.

As is so often the case with life’s entertainers, it is off stage that Mauser’s real character is revealed. 

He is willing to lie, con and steal to get his fix.

Josh Safdie, the film’s director, forces the audience to sit with this behaviour, offering no warning and little relief. The result is frequently painful to watch.

Early in the film Mauser enthusiastically encourages a fellow player to recount his experience in a Nazi concentration camp, setting up one of the film’s most memorable and disturbing scenes.

That same principle governs the dialogue. Grossly offensive jokes are fired off at the speed of a table-tennis serve and never allowed to land, the conversation moving on as relentlessly as a rally.

Odessa A’zion delivers a brilliant performance as the pregnant mother of Mauser’s child. A victim of her circumstance, she mirrors Mauser’s talent for manipulation and self-preservation. Their relationship is less a refuge than a collision.

All of this reinforces the grittiness of its setting – you feel like you are living in the dirty, criminal and enterprising city of 1950s New York.

In post-war America, as in Britain today, the distribution of opportunity is not equal. The film shows that inequality often isn’t loud or obvious. It’s not about cartoon villains, although there are a few here. It’s about how some people always get the benefit of the doubt, while others are expected to work twice as hard just to be taken seriously.

What ultimately makes the film work is Chalamet’s charm. Marty Mauser should not be a likeable character, and in many ways he simply isn’t. Yet he possesses the rare quality of charisma. You find yourself wanting him to succeed. He is, above all else, a born entertainer.

If you want to be entertained this winter, you could do worse than going to see the unsettling Marty Supreme.

Gordon McKee is Labour MP for Glasgow South

Marty Supreme

Directed by: Josh Safdie

Venue: General cinema release