Asher Luberto
Timothée Chalamet sure plays a mean ping-pong. In the chaotically wonderful Marty Supreme, Chalamet serves up his best performance since Call Me By Your Name and proves his “one of the greats” speech wasn’t a fluke. As Marty Mauser, a self-centered dork of a ping-pong player, he gets to showcase the exhilarating range he displayed early in his career but has shed since. With monotone performances in the Dune series — spice melange could have just been called Ambien — and a string of mediocre parts in recent indies, I was skeptical we would ever see another great performance from the actor. No longer — his kinetic, powder-keg performance as a real-life table tennis star is only matched by the cocaine-in-your-veins direction of Josh Safdie (Uncut Gems), who turns the game of ping-pong into a non-stop catastrophic thrill ride.
Of all the subjects to explore for a solo directorial debut, ping-pong might seem like an odd choice. Who doesn’t enjoy throwing on some table tennis during the Olympics, but a 150-minute movie — that’s crazy! What elevates this beyond a silly sports homage is Safdie’s ability to orchestrate a picaresque odyssey about the American dream, and the extremes people take to get there, around such a whimsical subject.
This is operatic, meaningful filmmaking, opening in a textured 1950’s New York City. Scatterbained Marty, a born hustler, has a job selling shoes, but he has dreams of becoming the number one ping-pong player on the planet. He’s got a long way to go, and a lot of money to make, so he starts by stealing from his boss, hopping on a flight and wiping the floor with the competition, only to lose to an elegant Japanese champ in the finals.
(A24)
For the gritty, shameless Marty, this is just fuel for the fire, the wake-up call he needed to train to be the best there is. He might not have finished first, but he finishes first that night with a glamorous 1930s movie star, Kay (Gwyneth Paltrow), who caught his eye while sauntering through a ritzy hotel lobby. In a humorous scene, he gives Kay a ring while standing on his bed in socks, underwear and a bathrobe, convincing her to spend the night. He swindles her out of a necklace, then wheedles his way into the bad graces of Kay’s husband (Kevin O’Leary), who lures Marty into a scheme that involves selling pens but is really orchestrated to set up his demise. Meanwhile, a woman he knocked up wants revenge and his mother belittles Marty from the sidelines.
Wait, isn’t this movie about ping pong? Sort of. Marty is a fraudster with the schemes of Leonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me if You Can and the insufferable greed of Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems, screwing over everyone in his path to greatness, making this more a case study in seedy opportunism than a conventional sports biopic. Don’t expect Rocky training montages here. Instead, we watch Safdie’s controlled tornado demolish everything in his path, until all that hot air runs dry and this hypocritical man dissipates, like a tornado, into utter nothingness — all that’s left is wreckage in his wake.
While that might sound like a one-man show, movies are a team sport, a cumulative effort from hundreds of distinctive pieces playing their role to perfection. In Marty Supreme, every piece is meticulously assembled in a whirlwind of controlled chaos. There are endless surface pleasures to enjoy in Marty Supreme, including the immersive grainy cinematography of Darius Khondji and the steamy sewers, trash-strewn alleys and basement-lit arenas that make up Jack Fisk’s production design, every bit as lived-in as a New York City deli. Safdie’s needle drops are equally electric, using 80’s bangers in a 50’s setting the same way Martin Scorsese did with Mean Streets.
(A24)
At the center of it all is Chalemet’s Marty, the locus of the film’s energy. His ego complicates things, but his drive to become the greatest ping pong player ever pairs symphonically with Chalamet’s drive to be the greatest actor ever. Scrawny, scrappy, a double shot of espresso and a line of cocaine, some soda and an unhealthy dose of Adderall, Chalamet delivers an energizer bunny performance that doesn’t let up for the entirety of this sprawling epic, and his character’s sheer determination to succeed is what propels this film to another level of filmmaking.
It’s every bit as ambitious, spontaneous, unhinged and breathlessly entertaining as Marty himself — a 150-minute ping pong rally that keeps your head spinning and your hands jittering until the final frame, which isn’t so much victorious as it is cathartic, the realization that all this manipulation leaves Marty as hollow as the ping-pong balls he smashes into oblivion. Marty may never achieve gold, the sole purpose of his pathetic existence, but the same can’t be said for Chalamet, who makes a strong case to receive a gold statue at the Oscars this March, starting off his legacy as one of the greats.