MARTY SUPREME

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If you, like me, scroll through social media in the middle of the night while pining after lost loves and wrestling with your demons, you will have encountered the terrifying, ubiquitous pseudo-self-helping likes of Steven Bartlett, Mel Somethingorother and Peter “no, it’s totes impossible for me to button my shirt beyond my navel…” Crone (who humbly calls himself The Mind Architect… ffs), each diagnosing you with a whole host of problems in areas in which they have no qualifications whatsoever, flagrantly issuing remedies for the cure.  One such remedy, more often than not, is for you to find a purpose.  Yes, just like Navin Juggler’s mum teaches him in THE JERK, we all need a special purpose, a North Star to give us direction and get us out of bed every morning.  And for Marty Mauser (Timothee Chalomet), the purpose is ping pong (and I’ve recently read that alliteration is the least impressive literary device, so prepare for plenty of persistent ping pong puns…).

Why ping pong, you ask?  Well, at first there is some logic for Marty’s focus on becoming World Champion in the emerging “sport”: he travels to London set on making a sufficiently big name for himself to warrant investment in a range of orange ping pong balls (the colour would allow players to wear white, a more elegant sporting uniform raising the game to the level of lawn tennis, say) and other such revenue-generating ping pong paraphernalia, his likeness on a Wheaties box etc etc etc.  So far, so run o’ the mill American dream to make enough money for a home, a family, the good life.

But in practice our Marty veers somewhat from the logical and the ideals of the white picket fence, seemingly prepared to do whatever it takes to achieve not a good life, but a great one… a supreme one.  Why should he stay at the lodgings afforded to all the other ping pong tournament players when he is the representative of the US and the great hope for raising the status of the nascent game?  If the sport’s officials and sponsors are staying at the Ritz, then why-oh-why shouldn’t he?  Marty, it seems, suffers from the same ailment with which many of the men in my life are burdened: exceptionalism.  [And yes, Peter “no, the hair on my head is totally naturally this orange colour even if the hair on my chin and on my entirely-publicly-observable chest and navel is grey-to-white…” Crone would casually describe it as narcissism, but I think we are being way too loosey-goosey with that word.  If we call every Tom (Cruise), Dick (ermmmm… I guess “Dicks” are out of fashion?  Hard to think of a self-identifying Dick, init?), Harry (Sussex) or Peter (Crone) a narcissist, however tempting that might be, we give ourselves nowhere to go with the truly depraved specimens for whom the psychiatric diagnosis is reserved, so I stick with exceptionalism.]

Marty thinks he is exceptional (or special… or supreme) and he believes he can best express his exceptionalism in the field of ping pong, making that his purpose.  So, why ping pong, filmmaking-wise?  Well, why not?  I think the point is that Marty (and Josh Safdie and Ronald Bronstein) could have picked any ol’ arbitrary purpose whatsoever, be it something consequential to humankind or otherwise, and ping pong is as pleasing a pursuit as any other.  Having lost the London match to his Japanese nemesis, Endo, Marty sets his sights on Tokyo and a rematch, a singular goal that is entirely severed from the logical aspiration of the American dream, and one he will do anything to reach, not least stealing, cheating, hustling, lying, injuring, arson, adultery, murder, humiliation and even being kinda mean to a dog.  Yes, a dog!  Josh Safdie is entirely clear that nothing whatsoever sits outside the realm of things Marty Mauser is prepared to do to reach his goal and beat Endo in Tokyo.

The great success of MARTY SUPREME, imo, is that the audience is in prime position to observe the stealing, cheating, hustling, lying, injuring, arson, adultery, murder and even being kinda mean to a dog - heaps and heaps of collateral damage amassed in pursuit of the singular and somewhat ludicrous goal of winning a ping pong match - and yet when Marty scores the final point against Endo we are delighted for him.  We are ecstatic.  I cried.  Somehow the stealing, cheating, hustling, lying, injuring, arson, adultery, murder, humiliation and even being kinda mean to a dog seems justified and entirely reasonable given Marty is only pursuing his purpose and believing in his own exceptionalism and supremacy.  After all, don’t we all want to find our purpose?   Don’t we all want to believe ourselves to be exceptional?  Supreme?   

Nobody knows the potency of finding and committing to one’s purpose and believing in oneself moreso than a film director.  Can you imagine the collateral damage amassed by the Safdie Brothers, Josh and his brother Benny, while they made dozens of teeny-tiny short films (and one TV film, it seems, per IMDb, my bible…) in advance of GOOD TIME and then UNCUT GEMS?  I imagine they committed their fair share of stealing, cheating, hustling, lying, injuring, arson, adultery, murder, humiliation and even being kinda mean to a dog in order to walk the red carpet at Cannes and cash an absolutely ginormous cheque from Netflix, right?  Like all great films, MARTY SUPREME is really about filmmaking and filmmakers.

Supremacy-wise, I think it is a fair moniker for Josh Safdie and his film: perfect pace (even if it does run at 150 mins - the endurance test is essential to Marty’s belief in himself and his purpose and we have to stick with him as he sticks with it), extraordinary score from Daniel Lopatin (who was also the Safdies’ composer on UNCUT GEMS) and soundtrack (particularly the choice of Tears for Fears’ ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’ as credits roll… sublime), superlative cinematography (every frame filled-to-bursting with the fully-realised worlds of 1950s New York, London and Tokyo), cardinal casting (particularly Odessa Mizler, spot-on choices of Tyler the Creator and Fran Drescher as Marty’s mum and kooky-but-it-works wand-wielders Penn & Teller… and, obvs, Gwyneth Paltrow as an aging actress of yesteryear… bit of a stretch, Gwynnie!… and her first role since she starred in my pick of 2023, GWYNETH PALTROW TESTIFIES IN SKI-CRASH TRIAL, wherein she was mesmerisingly brilliant… ).

In a word: SUPREME. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[Note: to date, there has been no stealing, cheating, hustling, lying, injuring, arson, adultery, murder, humiliation (…okay, a little bit of self-humiliation…) or being kinda mean to a dog associated with my special purpose of writing a Substack for the benefit of a few hundred readers….  Gimme time. 🙄]