Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme dares you to root for a guy with grindset energy
Courtesy A24
2025 marks the 99th anniversary of the formation of the International Table Tennis Federation, a group that, in seeking to advance the sport of table tennis, has come to serve as an unofficial diplomatic outreach group for disputed territories.
Traces of this diplomacy are on display in Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme, if one can tear their eyes away from leading man Timothee Chalamet long enough to find them.
Set over the course of roughly nine months in 1952, Marty Supreme follows table tennis hotshot Marty Mauser (Timothee Chalamet) as he seeks to escape his humdrum shoe salesman job in New York and turn table tennis into a full-time career. Following his shocking loss at Wembley to stoic Japanese opponent Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi), Mauser will stop at nothing to play in the Japanese tournament — never mind that the IATT (the fictionalized version of the sport’s governing body) has blacklisted him due to poor sportsmanship and thousands of dollars in unpaid hotel charges.
Oh, and he’s wanted by the police. Oh, and he may have gotten his longtime friend Rachel (Odessa A’zion) pregnant, in what is all but guaranteed to be the most memorable opening credits sequence of the year. Oh, and — (the ‘oh, ands’ never stop coming).
The Safdie machine is firing on all cylinders here. Frequent collaborators Ronald Bronstein (co-writer) and Darius Kohndji (cinematography) return, and Daniel Lopatin’s score moves in the background, guiding the film’s pace while perfectly meshing with an anachronistic licensed soundtrack of 80s synth-pop.
The supporting cast, while all remarkable in their own way, cannot compete with Chalamet’s unrelenting magnetism. After all, why would legendary actress Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow), clearly several decades Marty’s senior, fall into bed with him several times over the course of the film? Why would Marty’s best friend Wally (Tyler the Creator) stick beside him after hustling unsuspecting table tennis players a few towns over goes horribly awry? Marty’s mother Rebecca (Fran Drescher) is, unfortunately, an afterthought. In fact, every supporting character is an afterthought to Mauser (both on screen and in his own mind).
All that matters is his own greatness.
Courtesy A24
It’s hard not to root for Marty even while watching him hurt and use everyone in his orbit in pursuit of his dream. In one scene, Stone asks Marty after one of their rendezvous how he plans to feed himself that day. His brazenly honest answer: “I was going to wait until you left, order room service, and charge it to you.” That should be (and is) infuriating, but it’s also a perfect example of not only the generational divide between Stone and Mauser, and an illustration of just how sincerely Mauser believes in himself and expects others to follow.
It’s an incredibly modern moment; just open LinkedIn and you’ll be flooded with the exact same energy.
The comedy of errors that embody the bulk of Mauser’s quest is bombastically stressful, but the table tennis tournaments that bookend the film are beautiful, even calm despite their breakneck pace. It is during these moments, when all of Mauser’s audacious scheming comes to fruition, that both Mauser and the audience are able to relax, to coolly focus. The game of table tennis, when played well, feels like an easy conversation. It is only once Mauser learns to stop treating it like a monologue that success is found.
Marty Supreme opens in theatres on December 24th.
