Marty Supreme

January 9 – 15

Friday 1:30 & 7 pm
Saturday 7 pm
Sunday 1:30 & 7 pm
Monday 7 pm
Tuesday 7 pm
Wednesday 3:30
Thursday 7 pm 

Rated 14A – 2hr 25min

Sport / Drama

From the very beginning of Marty Supreme, Josh Safdie wants to confuse you a little. It’s a film set in the ‘50s, filmed with a movie language that’s incredibly reminiscent of the jittery character studies of the ‘70s, all set to a backdrop of ‘80s needle drops by Public Image Ltd., Peter Gabriel, and Tears for Fears. The displacement is intentional, a way to subconsciously disorient the viewer, putting them in the shoes of a character who’s never quite where he thinks he belongs, someone flung out of time.

Safdie employed similar techniques with his brother on Uncut Gems, another propulsive drama about a man who looks uncomfortable in his own skin, a shark who’s convinced he will drown if he stops swimming. Safdie’s daring choices merge with the best performance of Timothee Chalamet’s career for a story of a man who thinks he’s the best in the world at something, and that thinking is as important as actually being it.

The film is full of unexpected turns. It appears to be a sports film, but is actually about what a screw-up Marty is. He works in his uncle’s shoe shop on the Lower East Side of New York, but will let nothing stand in his way as he strives to compete in international table tennis. He scams, lies and steals from everyone, including those closest to him, to get to ping-pong tournaments. And he is not some clichéd loveable scamp, but an arrogant, entitled guy. He’s not movie-star glamorous, but a scrawny young man with a pencil moustache and blotchy skin. Most surprising of all, Chalamet’s on-screen charm, the character’s bravado and the film’s wit are captivating even when Marty’s behaviour is at its worst.

The film has the fanatical energy of a 149-minute ping pong rally carried out by a single player running round and round the table. It’s a marathon sprint of gonzo calamities and uproar, a sociopath-screwball nightmare like something by Mel Brooks – only in place of gags, there are detonations of bad taste, cinephile allusions, alpha cameos, frantic deal-making, racism and antisemitism, sentimental yearning and erotic adventures. It’s a farcical race against time where no one needs to eat or sleep.

It is rather that the film is itself ping pong; the rhythm and spirit of table tennis is in every scene and the mesmeric effect of the spectacular, clattering, dizzying back-and-forth. Marty Supreme is on its own spectrum of determination and emotional woundedness, and Chalamet hilariously enacts an unstoppable live-wire twitch, powered by indignation and self-pity. And Paltrow gives us a clever and wittily conceived counterweight to Marty’s thrumming narcissism; she is amusing and sensual, she sees what Marty is up to and understands him better than he does himself.

This is a story about living a great life, however you may define that. It is a film about living fully and without fear, a cynicism-free zone where, for all their fast-talking, people love each other so much it makes your heart feel like it’s about to burst. We root for Marty less for his skill, even if Safdie shoots his table tennis scenes with a striking intimacy, letting us see every fateful decision play out across his competitors’ faces. We root for him because we just want to see someone, for once, get one over on the fat cats. Whether he does or doesn’t, I’ll leave as a surprise, but Chalamet has a wonderful coda up his sleeve. He lets Marty, as a parting gift, become a human being again. He lets him cry.