I arrived calm. That matters. Because “Marty Supreme” doesn’t reward calm.
It starts off polite.
You think you know the rules. You think you’ve been here before: a story about an ambitious pingpong player.
Someone is going to work hard. Someone is going to rise. Someone will earn a title that makes sense on paper.
I hate to break it to you but that is the last time the movie lets you feel organized.
From there, it runs on that very specific kind of confidence that makes everyone in the room uncomfortable because it refuses to apologize.
What director Josh Safdie (“Uncut Gems”) created is something far less polite: a film about obsession with one’s purpose and the kind of belief that looks like delusion until it proves itself otherwise.
From the opening moments to the final scene, it never settles into something you can relax into.
I was on the edge of my seat the entire time and didn’t realize how fast my heart was racing until the lights came back on in the theater.
Timothée Chalamet doesn’t soften Marty at all. He just lets him exist at full volume.
It’s captivating and funny in ways that make you gasp before you laugh (if you know, you know).
At some point early on, you realize Marty is not chasing success.
What he’s actually chasing is certainty. Failure isn’t scary to him because it isn’t real.
When he says that the idea of his plan not working doesn’t even enter his consciousness, it isn’t bravado or a motivational quote you see on Pinterest.com.
It’s a very admirably specific worldview and a way of life. And somehow, infuriatingly almost, it works. That belief in himself carries him forward and also isolates him. It costs him comfort, relationships, a lot of the time and his dignity.
Getting spanked in front of businessmen to get a free flight to Japan is a questionable embodiment of the end justifying the means. And the film never pretends otherwise.
Marty is very brutally honest with himself about what that level of ambition demands. What I love most is that “Marty Supreme” refuses to pretend purpose is pretty.
It refused to romanticize the chase and it also refused to condemn it.
Marty humiliates himself. He embarrasses and degrades himself, and the movie doesn’t rush to justify it. That’s the price.
Take it or leave it. I walked out of the theater overstimulated in the best way. Someone nearby said, “Yeah, I think it was good.”
I wanted to ask what movie they watched. Because “Marty Supreme” isn’t about pingpong or winning. Or even talent.
It’s about the dangerous yet necessary lie you tell yourself in order to become who you’re meant to be.
Sometimes you have to believe in yourself so hard it looks embarrassing.
Sometimes you have to be delusional. And sometimes, that’s the only way anything great gets made.
Grade: A+
