Marty Supreme (2025)

Rated R for language, sex, nudity, racial slurs, and violence.  It's a Safdie movie, so you can expect at least a little bit of questionable material.  This one gets pretty explicit at various parts of the movie, so just be prepped.  It's not exactly Uncut Gems level of intense, but it isn't exactly a walk in the park either.  Even when things aren't explicit, the movie is graphic enough to convey that kids shouldn't be seeing this movie.  If you signed up to see a biopic about table tennis, yeah, that's not exactly the best description.

DIRECTOR:  Josh Safdie

I really do have to make that point clear.  This isn't "That ping pong movie."  Okay, it is.  When it all comes down to it and people ask you, "What's Marty Supreme?"  It's that ping pong movie.  But you know what?   It totally isn't.  As much as this is a movie about a real life table tennis champion, so little of the movie is actually about table tennis that I'm almost insulted on behalf of this movie for being reduced to it being described as a ping pong movie.

I also have to make a confession.  I told everyone that I wasn't excited to see this movie.  After all, I wasn't a fan of Uncut Gems, which made me think that the Safdies only did shocking movies.  And it's not like Marty Supreme isn't intense at times.  As I mentioned in my MPA section, there are sections that get wildly uncomfortable.  It's just that Marty Supreme is an incredibly told story that is engaging and often surprising.  The second reason that I wasn't excited about this movie is that I wasn't exactly jazzed to see another Timothee Chalamet biopic that is out just in time for Oscar season.  We had a discussion in my film class that, outside of Dune, Timothee Chalamet does better in movies when he is a supporting actor as opposed to having the film rest on his shoulders.  But now I have to put that in question because every single performer in this movie absolutely nailed it.

Even Gwenyth Paltrow.  Okay, I have no shade for Paltrow normally.  It's just that I've never really seen her in a role like she had in this film.  I don't know.  It always felt like Paltrow signed up for things that were safer.  I know that there's a bit of a hubbub about the fact that she came out of a six-year retirement for this film and people are wondering why.  I mean, it isn't all that shocking.  This is a character that actually was a bit challenging.  There's depth to that character.  Who wouldn't want to play Kay in this movie?  It was a no brainer and she honestly did a fantastic job with the role.  

But I am trying to nail down what impressed me most about the movie.  The easy answer is that it wasn't about ping-pong because sports / competition movies do little for me.  Instead, I want to first and foremost applaud the performances.  I know.  I've been doing that a lot so far.  But as much as I'm praising Chalamet and Paltrow (again, I won't take back what I said...they did a fantastic job), I'm really praising Odessa A'zion as Rachel. Oh my goodness, every time she's on screen, my wife and whispered back and forth, "Who is that?  She's so good in this."  Rachel could have been a forgotten part in the hands of a lesser actress.  The movie takes place in the 1950s.  Abused housewife having an affair with the protagonist is borderline an archetype with a sprinkle of trope in there.  Rachel, from moment one, gains sympathy.  The opening credits involve Marty's sperm impregnating Rachel's egg.  And we see nor-hide-nor-hair from her for a good while.  The next time we see her, she's eight months pregnant and it seems like her life just fell apart.  So when we see her making these active choices that show that she has more agency than Marty seems to allow her, it's fasciating.  And, in a really messed up way, Rachel is good for Marty.  He's his best self when he's with her, as long as he's not in survival mode.  Also, Tyler the Creator, while not as juicy of a part than the other characters, can really act.  Like, really act.  I knew that he was in this movie, but I kept forgetting that when I saw that Wally holds his own to Marty's overly smug characterization.

As good as the acting was (which --despite it being early days --probably should get some acting accolades), the script?!?  I mean, the Safdies are kind of famous for script writing. But this is a story that kept on catching me off guard.  I mean, I cannot give enough respect for the sheer chaos that this movie exhibits, especially when it comes to Moses the Dog.  Oh my goodness, it's amazing how much bad luck one character can have.  But the Safdies, beyond simply giving the film some honestly A-class dialogue, wrote a story where we absolutely hate the protagonist, yet want him to succeed.  He's a more pathetic Walter White.  And the thing is, the screenwriters understood that not everything in the film is necessarily Marty's fault.  The inciting incident for the second act that carries Marty through an After Hours level of insanely bad luck is a moment where he refused to be bullied by his uncle.  His uncle very clearly said that he would get paid at the end of the day.  But based on his uncle's character, that was simply a ruse to keep him in the family business.  When his uncle hires a cop to arrest him for stealing, despite the fact that Marty's right and that the money was his, everything else becomes a series of bad choices made out of desperation.  Marty, throughout the piece, has two problems: bad luck and a bad attitude.  The bad luck sucks and maybe a better human being would know when to throw in the cards.  But Marty's character turns every 3 problem into a 10 problems given enough rope to hang himself.

Because I listen to "You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes", I can't help but try to tie the end of this blog to religion.  The Safdies have openly been telling stories about the Jewish people in their films.  This one is interesting because there's almost something masochistic about Judaism in this movie.  It's not openly ever about faith.  But the first act of the film establishes that one of the main characters is a Holocaust survivor.  Coupled with that, there's a stigma to the fact that a Japanese challenger is allowed to take part in the table tennis tournament.  While Marty is never really the instigator of his faith being discussed, his relationships to other Jews brings out something very cynical about faith.  I will say that Josh Safdie does use Judaism more of a coloring to a character than an actual plot point, but it also was a message of a character who was so divorced from the religious elements of faith that he could only view his identity from a cultural, not a theological perspective.

I'm so curious what the original end of this movie would have looked like.  For those who don't know, there's a vampire ending to this film.  Yeah, a true story about a guy has a potential vampire ending.  And the movie sets it up too.  It's not like there was nothing on the screen that set up for a vampire ending.  It's in there.  My wife and I were baffled by it.  But it also seemed that the studio hated the notion that there was an ending that involved characters becoming vampires.  The funny thing is, the whole movie is prepped for that.  There's this anachronistic (thanks, Lauren) soundtrack to the film that is meant to have a pay off with a sequence in the '80s where characters didn't age due to vampirism.  It's such a gutsy ending that seemed super risky.  Still I kind of wanted a peek at that ending beyond just the tease that we got from Milton Rockwell.

I dug this movie, guys.  I didn't think that I would.  But Marty Supreme is really hitting with me right now.  I know that I have a lot more movies to watch, but Marty Supreme was a good start to Oscar season.