It’s difficult to write about Marty Supreme without sounding hyperbolic. It’s irritating to write words like “masterpiece” or phrases like “a once in a lifetime cinematic experience” because doing so makes it appear as though I have been carried away by hype—that I have allowed the excitement and cultural phenomenon of Marty Supreme to overpower the honesty of my critical writing.
But unfortunately there is no other way to talk about the film because, simply put, Marty Supreme is a masterpiece. It’s the kind of film that reinvigorates the medium and is remembered for decades as a beloved classic.
Writer/director Josh Safdie has crafted a film that is both incredibly entertaining and incredibly timely, speaking to the current global cultural landscape in a way that no other film released in this decade has. Starring Timothée Chalamet as Marty Mauser, a Jewish table tennis player in 1950s New York, Marty Supreme follows Mauser as he attempts to make enough money to enter into the World Table Tennis Championships in Tokyo.
Chalamet is absolutely brilliant as Mauser. He gives what is undoubtedly the best performance of the year and one of the best performances of the decade. In a lesser actor’s hands, Marty would be completely unlikable and absolutely unwatchable, but Chalamet turns him into a charismatic underdog who you can’t help but root for despite his evident moral failings.
Gwyneth Paltrow and Odessa A’zion portray his two love interests, Kay Stone and Rachel Mizler, respectively. Paltrow is incredible and her performance is a definite return to form following almost 15 years of wooden MCU performances. A’zion is a revelation, a truly funny and charming actress who delivers one of the film’s best performances and holds her own against her more well-known costars. Rapper Tyler, the Creator turns in a shockingly good and quite frequently hilarious performance from the non-actor as Mauser’s friend and business partner Wally. Fran Drescher is heartbreaking as Marty’s mother Rebecca, an uncharacteristically dramatic performance from the comedienne that works excellently.
Marty Supreme is also the highly publicised acting debut of businessman, Shark Tank judge, and renowned arsehole Kevin O’Leary, and it is with great irritation that I report that he is absolutely wonderful. He is a joy to watch as Marty’s benefactor Milton Rockwell, and is so good in the part that it makes you wonder why he hasn’t been doing this his whole life instead of shilling crypto and opposing worker’s rights.
Beyond its stellar performances, what really makes Marty Supreme a masterpiece is the way in which Safdie uses his film to explore the concept of monoculture. While the film’s premise may sound too trivial to deal with such a loaded concept, Safdie revels in this triviality and uses it to further his film’s broader cultural statement. Marty Supreme is a perfect microcosm of the global monoculture, and the film’s low-stakes premise is exactly what allows this perfection. Safdie and his co-writer Ronald Bronstein condense 100 years of culture and history, both cinematic and otherwise, into their film’s 1950s New York setting, and allow Mauser’s exploits within that setting to highlight the failings of a monocultural existence.
Safdie and co achieve their microcosm in a number of ways, particularly through stunt casting—the practice of casting, in most cases, non-actors and public figures in roles based on the name recognition they hold with audiences instead of their actual acting merit.
While the film does employ conventional actors such as Chalamet, Paltrow, A’zion, and Drescher, it also features numerous non-actors and public figures in prominent roles, like O’Leary and Tyler, the Creator as mentioned previously, as well as independent film director Abel Ferrara, playwright David Mamet and Penn Jillette of popular magic duo Penn & Teller, to name a few. While stunt casting is typically employed to generate publicity or boost viewership, Marty Supreme utilises this casting specifically to draw on the audience’s preexisting familiarity with the person in the role. As a result, the film’s ‘50s setting feels remarkably familiar, as it is populated by figures who are known to us in our modern lives, be it because we see them on our screens or because we listen to their music or because we are simply aware of them through cultural osmosis.
Safdie’s microcosm is also achieved through what can only be described as a kind of temporal coexistence. Despite the ‘50s setting, multiple decades and eras seem to converge in Marty Supreme. Paltrow portrays a retired 1930s film star, the soundtrack is filled with needle-drops from 1980s bands like Alphaville and Tears for Fears, Mauser conducts himself with a distinctly 2010s/Gen Z bravado, and the Holocaust and the Pacific War are extensively referenced throughout. Even the film itself seems inspired by both the gritty anxious films of the 1970s, such as The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and Mikey and Nicky, and the underdog sports films of the 1990s and 2000s like Jerry Maguire and Million Dollar Baby. As a result of this, the film feels as though it either exists outside of time itself or in a place where history seems to run concurrently. This, as well as the familiarity caused by the stunt casting, perfectly reflects monoculture—an existence in which unfamiliarity is eliminated and the past, the present, and the future exist in tandem. An existence that is shared and universal.
Through his presence within this microcosm setting, Marty Mauser becomes a character that is emblematic of monoculture and his character flaws highlight its negative impacts on the individual. Because the past, present, and future are not clearly defined, he cannot think linearly—his past failures are not learned from so they continue into the future and his present actions are committed with no regard for how they will negatively affect his future. He regularly acts selfishly and hurts those around him because he arrogantly assumes a shared and universal familiarity with his needs and experiences amongst those around him. On top of this, the fact that he is so invested in what is in reality a low-stakes sporting endeavour, to the extent that he has tied his own self-worth to it, highlights how monoculture elevates such meager happenings and demands undue investment in them.
Marty is the quintessential monocultural individual— selfish, narcissistic, and self-destructive. It is this critique that makes Marty Supreme so memorable, and Safdie’s ability to make it while still extending empathy to his main character is what makes his film a masterpiece. He criticises his audience but doesn’t demonize them, instead sincerely believing in their ability to change. The film becomes remarkably human and in some ways inspires its viewer to be better.
Overall, Marty Supreme is a timely and poignant masterpiece and is undoubtedly the best film of the year and one of the best films of this decade. It’s a cinema trip that you will absolutely not regret and a film that you will enjoy immensely and will be remembered for decades to come.
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