In the middle of his speech last year for the SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Lead Role, Timothée Chalamet said that he was in the “pursuit of greatness”
“I know people don’t usually talk like that,” he said. “But I want to be one of the greats.” He invoked names like Marlon Brando, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Viola Davis, but also Michael Phelps and Michael Jordan — there’s an athletic bent to this pursuit, as well as an artistic one. And since that win (for his role as Bob Dylan in “A Complete Unknown”), Chalamet has only doubled down on this prophetic sort of confidence. It’s a move that has certain corners of the internet in shambles, hand-wringing over his perceived likeability. But I, for one, find it invigorating — the mark of a movie star who deeply understands not just performance, but how to market himself and a movie like “Marty Supreme” in the age of the internet.
“Marty Supreme,” Josh Safdie’s new film about a table tennis player who will stop at nothing in his own pursuit of greatness, sits at the same intersection of artistry and athleticism as Chalamet’s public persona, positioning his character, Marty Mauser (loosely based on real life table tennis player Marty Reisman) as the embodiment of young American ambition, with all the good and bad that entails. Marty exists in a lineage of complicated, talented, terrible men, who will do whatever it takes — lie, cheat, hurt, steal — to get to the mountaintop. The film considers that streak of ambition and its collision with American capitalism. But at its heart, “Marty Supreme” is also a movie about coming into your own and growing up — all wrapped up in an immensely entertaining thrill ride.
Set against the backdrop of a 1950s, Jack Fisk-designed New York City, when we first meet Marty, he’s ditching a shift in his uncle’s shoe store for a quick jump in the sack with Rachel (Odessa A’zion) — his married childhood friend — in the basement. There’s a certain swagger to Marty. He’s always got a skip in his step, and he barrels through the world like a bulldozer, confident in the assertion that he deserves — and will get — whatever he wants. At one point, he holds a coworker at gunpoint to get the money that will get him to the British Open of table tennis in London. The coworker says he doesn’t believe Marty will shoot him, and maybe that’s true. But, watching the little glint of mania in Marty’s eyes rear its ugly head time and time again, I wouldn’t be so sure.
There is no line Marty won’t cross to get what he wants. Your mileage may vary on how much you can stand him, but there is no denying that this is an archetype we are reared to love in both movies and sports. Marty is a scrappy underdog — kind of a cocksure asshole, sure, but able to back up his mouth with his talent. When he gets to London, however, he’s met with a surprise. For the first time since World War II, Japan is allowed back in the tournament. In the championship, Japan’s competitor Endo (Koto Kawaguchi) hands Marty a devastating loss. The movie, then, becomes about getting back in front of Endo at all costs.
Marty makes for an eminently watchable protagonist not just because of his talent, but because of his singular belief that he is the only person in his life whose destiny lies beyond the street he grew up on. He looks down on those who choose (or have no option but) to stay, seeing them as lesser than. Rachel, who winds up pregnant with Marty’s child after their tryst in the shoe store, bears the brunt of his cruelty in this respect. For as quick and electric as their back and forth can be, the chemistry between Chalamet and A’zion is grounded — you can feel the history between them, can feel that this relationship has been building to a critical point since they were eight years old. In one scene after Rachel makes a crucial decision and their push and pull comes to a head, Marty tells Rachel that unlike him, she has no purpose in life. He can’t see far enough beyond his own nose to see that her purpose — getting out of a loveless marriage and finding a stable home for her child, but also proving to Marty just how much she cares for him — is no less important to her than table tennis greatness is to him. She is just as singularly (and delusionally, some might say) focused on her goal. They’re kind of perfect for each other.
As hurtful as Marty can be to those around him, the more poignant idea in “Marty Supreme” is how willing he is to hurt himself for his goal. He is a product of his own ambition, but also of the politics of the time, embodied within Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary of “Shark Tank” fame), a wealthy businessman who takes a vested interest in Marty’s antics, and who Marty thinks he can use to get himself back in front of Endo at the World Championship in Tokyo. Rockwell has an attraction to Marty from a business standpoint, but he is also thoroughly disgusted with everything he represents. There’s a throughline of antisemitism here — at one point, Rockwell gets testy with Marty’s friend Bela Kletzki (Géza Röhrig), who survived Auschwitz during the Holocaust. “My son died liberating you,” he growls. When Marty points out that Bela was liberated by the Soviets, Rockwell admits his son died in the Pacific theater — nowhere near the concentration camp where Bela suffered.
Marty is Jewish too, but that’s not exactly (or at least, not the only thing) that disgusts Rockwell. It’s the fact that Marty has the audacity to strive for something greater than his circumstances. There is something lowly to Rockwell about passion, about wanting something so badly you’d be willing to call attention to your desire. He holds the same contempt for his wife, a former movie actress called Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow) who’s in the middle of trying for a comeback on the stage. He packs the theater with his uninterested colleagues to make sure she has a full house (oblivious to why this might make her unhappy) and studiously ignores her devastation over poor reviews. When he invites Marty to participate in an exhibition game in Japan against Endo — the catch being that Marty has to lose so as to not upset Rockwell’s business interests in the country — he can’t understand why Marty would refuse the money.
But Marty can’t refuse for long, having run out of options for ways to get to Tokyo for the championships by the film’s final act. Rockwell is his only hope, laughing at Marty as he begs for help, red in the face with desperation as he vows to do anything. This moment is Marty’s lowest, subjugating himself to the whims of the wealthy elite. His shame is like a dirty joke to Rockwell. Marty’s ambition is not something to be admired, but rather laughed at and scorned.
Marty and Kay are two sides of a coin with Rockwell in the middle. Kay represents something Marty thinks he wants — an artist who gamed the system for wealth and power. But Kay is attracted to Marty because he represents who she used to be — ambitious, talented, hungry — before she gave up her artistry for money and security. I don’t know if I completely buy that those things are mutually exclusive, but I do buy that the evil ideal of American wealth that Rockwell embodies is a cold and soulless one. Marty might call Kay a sellout to her face and insist that he wants to make it on his own without any outside help (the purest form of success in his mind) but all throughout the film, he’s interested in Rockwell for the same reasons she is — and will be disappointed just the same.
“Marty Supreme” thrives on the tension between the different Americas that Marty and Rockwell represent. And if Marty experiences any growth by film’s end, it’s that he has learned not to give into the capitalistic impulse that creates the Rockwells of the world. Instead of scrounging, and pleading, and lying, and cheating, he finds a purer form of artistry untainted by Rockwell’s money. As Marty starts to buck against Rockwell’s empty promise of wealth, there’s a shocking moment where Rockwell proclaims himself a vampire, telling Marty that he will always be around to prey on the Marty Mausers of the world. “You will never be happy,” he says, a metaphor for the unending plight of the lower working class versus the immortal power of the rich. But Marty just laughs incredulously. The idea that he would pick integrity and the love of the game over embarrassment cloaked in money is a foreign concept to Rockwell. For Marty, realizing which one he values is a crucial step in growing up, in becoming a man who can face his unborn child with pride.
For Chalamet, Marty represents a coalescence of his movie star persona. Every few years, old YouTube videos of him as a child make the rounds on the internet. They usually include him rapping, or dancing to “Soulja Boy,” or unabashedly proclaiming himself “Timmy Tim” in front of an audience. These brash, often very funny videos stand in stark contrast to the boyish charm he would deliver in films like “Call Me By Your Name” and “Little Women.” But with “Marty Supreme,” he’s tapped into the unbridled confidence of that little kid — scrappy, supremely sure of his own smoke, and willing to show it off.