Live Wire: Film Review of Marty Supreme
★★★★
By Geoff Carter
Illustration by Michael DiMilo
When I was a teenager still living at home, I have a vivid memory of rewiring a lamp. During the process of connecting the wires, I somehow managed to grab two live ones at the same time and gave myself a terrific shock. It was momentarily painful, but I wasn’t really hurt. What was weird was that I couldn’t let go for a minute. It was heart-stopping (shocking), but somehow exhilarating afterwards—sort of a one hundred-and-twenty-volts rush. My hands were trembling, my breath was short, and heart was beating a mile a minute.
I bring this up because the memory of this sensation returned to me as I was watching Josh Safdie’s new film, Marty Supreme. From the first scene of Marty Mauser (Timothee Chalamet) working his schtick in the shoe store to the frenetic scenes of the table tennis tournament to the final denouement in the hospital, it felt like I was connected to a high-powered generator and couldn’t let go.
As the film opens, Marty, a table tennis champion, is obsessed with defeating world champion Bela Kletzki (Gezha Rohrig), and so takes a job working as a shoe salesman in his uncle’s store to get the money he needs to compete in British Open. His friend Rachel (Odessa A’Zion) shows up and the two sneak into the back to have sex, followed by a rather strange sequence playing behind the rolling credits. When Murray won’t give him the money he earned because he doesn’t want Marty to leave his mother, he steals the money and leaves.
After he arrives at the players’ barracks, Marty demands better lodgings and installs himself at the Ritz. Relentlessly and outrageously selling himself to reporters in the lobby, he spies movie star Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow) and manages—in an unremitting hard sell—to seduce her. Afterwards, he meets—and alienates—her wealthy husband Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary). Marty beats Kletzki in the tourney but loses to Japanese sensation Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi), who is a new type of paddle.
Infuriated at his loss, Marty insists it was the paddle that beat him and not the man. Because of money issues, he is compelled to do an international tour with Kletzki for the Harlem Globetrotters as the halftime entertainment. Determined to beat Endo, Marty returns to New York, where he is confronted by his Uncle Murray and arrested for taking the seven hundred dollars. Marty escapes and seeks help from Rachel, who is pregnant. Although she is married, she insists the baby is Marty’s. He denies it and enlists his friend Wally (Tyler, the Creator) to help him get some money.
Marty checks into a shabby hotel. Even though the clerk warns him not to use the bathtub, he does, breaking the arm of Ezra Mishkin (Abel Ferrara) and injuring his dog Moses. Ezra pays Marty to take Moses to the vet, but he and Wally use the money to hustle some local ping-pong players. The scam is exposed, Marty and Wally barely escape, and Moses gets away.
Things go from bad to worse. Faced with unrelenting bad luck (most of it of his own making) and manipulating, bullying, alienating, bullshitting, or bulldozing anyone who stands in his way, Marty Mauser is nothing less than an adrenalized force of nature. Never looking back, never feeling remorse, never showing a shred of empathy or humanity, Marty is so caustically and frenetically narcissistic and driven that his behavior is very nearly sociopathic. His obsession with becoming the world champion of table tennis and defeating his nemesis Koto Endo is all that matters to him.
Climbing on the shoulders—and over the bodies of—his uncle, his mother (Fran Drescher), his friends Wally and Dion (Luke Manley), his lover Kate, and Rachel, the mother of his child, Marty only shows flashes of empathy for the people uses. He will do anything, even enduring the ultimate public humiliation at the hands of Milton Rockwell to get his sponsorship to compete against Endo.
For all his arrogance and abrasiveness (even mocking Rockwell’s grief for his dead son), Marty manages to seduce, persuade, and befriend people. His belief in himself is so deep-rooted and unshakable, it seems to work as sort of a shock and awe on others, but at times, he does display a sort of empathy, even though it is deeply rooted in self-interest. After Rachel’s husband gives her a black eye, Marty visits him and pays him back in kind. While visiting Kay’s play rehearsal, he praises her performance (albeit to get on her good side) and surprisingly gives a cogent critique of another actor’s performance. Marty can be a nice guy—if it’s too his advantage.
Navigating through bathtub accidents, random violence, angry mobs, frantic police chases, and disastrous car crashes does not deter Marty from his quests. In fact, the degrees of audaciousness and chaos seem to increase proportionally to his wild ambitions as if the fates were pushing back against him.
Playing this sort of anti-hero can be tricky for an actor. Trying to maintain a balance between Marty’s obsessive compulsions—and attached nastiness—with the sympathetic elements of his character is difficult.
Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie’s screenplay does inject a sense of humor into Marty’s compulsiveness. In the scene where he comes back to the shoe store to get paid but discovers his uncle has left, Marty, determined to get his pay, grabs a gun and tells co-worker Lloyd (Ralph Colucci) he will shoot him unless he gives him the money. In a hilarious exchange where Marty is at his argumentative best, he convinces Lloyd—after denigrating him—to give him the money to get rid of him. Lloyd gladly complies.
Marty’s friendship with the laconic Kletzki goes a long way to redeem his obnoxiousness, but when Marty tells Rockwell an odd but touching story about Kletzki’s time in Dachau, the tale gets so resoundingly weird but strangely beautiful, so much so the scene almost seems out of place.
But as good as the dialogue is, it is Timothee Chalamet who gives Marty soul. While the viewer may be repulsed by Marty’s outrageousness and abrasiveness, his determination and charisma awe-inspiring. It’s hard not to admire the kind of dedication and single-mindedness in pursuit of a dream. And Marty is talented. The tournament sequences are awesome. Chalamet practiced his table tennis skills for years specifically for this part, even bringing tables to other movie sets, embodying the sort of intense dedication that seems very Martyesque.
Timothee Chalamet brings an intensity and non-stop fervor as well as an infectious charisma to the role. It is the most brilliant performance of his young brilliant career—so far. As Marty ping-pongs (sorry) through the increasingly outrageous misadventures and blunders on his way to meet Endo, the audience can only do its best to breathlessly follow.
Based loosely on the life of table tennis star Marty Reisman, Marty Supreme is also a somewhat satiric take on the American dream. Marty’s dedication, hard work, and sacrifice have always the requisite paragons for success, but in Marty’s case, they mean little compared to realities of a poor kid from the lower East Side. And these are the qualities that nearly lead Marty to his own destruction. It is Milton and Kay and their rich friends who get the breaks; in fact, Marty must humble himself to Rockwell in the most humiliating fashion to get to the match in Japan.
While Marty and Rachel are having sex in the store, the camera cuts away to footage of a sperm cell reaching an egg as the credits play. Then, near the end, as Rachel has her baby, the course of her pregnancy seems to parallel Marty’s quest. Whether Safdie is signifying Marty’s attainment of his goal heralds a rebirth or signals the end of his is open to interpretation, it is a fitting cap for a wonderful romp of a movie. It is much more pleasant than putting your finger in a light socket.