Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie, 2025)

[cantinflas]

It's all still sinking in for me but wow all I can say is believe the hype. There's obviously a lot of complexity to Marty's character that you guys have all brilliantly thrashed out and I'll have to go back and have a more in-depth read, but just on first impression it's the relentless ride of it that blew me away. It's just pure kineticism that never lets up or allows you to settle into a comfortable groove, a reflection of his intensely chaotic psyche as he goes from grift to grift. Yet at the same time this agitation never makes it a struggle to watch, it absolutely flew by and was such a thrill to behold on the big screen.

Marty is exactly how I always imagined Harmony Korine to be in the 90s, hustling and scamming on the streets of NYC which is why I was so drawn to him. No one but Chalamet could've pulled this off.

Overall this film felt like Fury Road in ping pong hustler form.

[thirtyframesasecond]

I thought this was terrific; similar to Good Time / Uncut Gems, it's a high-stress film about a charismatic asshole who can't catch a break. The anachronistic music works really well, numerous memorable minor characters often played in cameo roles, and the 150 mins zips by.

[Matt]

Blu-ray and 4K UHD editions coming directly from A24. Basically what Criterion would give us but it’s $10 cheaper than Criterion’s list price.

https://shop.a24films.com/products/mart ... me-blu-ray

[swo17]

But will never be available for 50% off?

[nitin]

I assume those who like this actually find Marty and his antics charismatic and exciting? Because if not, I am curious to understand what else there is to latch on to here?

[The Curious Sofa]

I haven't watched this yet, but I'm a little wary because neither Good Time nor Uncut Gems did much for me. I'm fine with unsympathetic protagonists but they have to be interesting. With both of these films, I had no idea why I was supposed to invest well over two hours in characters who had next to no redeeming virtues, we're the masters of their misfortune and who just weren't very bright, to be honest.

[Lowry_Sam]

I’m probably in the minority, but I found this more enjoyable than One Battle Or Another despite the annoying nature of the lead character. In that film I found I was paying more attention to how things fit together, whereas with Marty Supreme , I was more able to set scrutiny aside and just be taken along for the ride. I hadn’t seen any other Safdie films & because of the hype of the marketing campaign my expectations were actually low/nonexistent, whereas I had seen PTAs other films beforehand and did expect to be impressed with OBOA.

[swo17]

I assume those who like this actually find Marty and his antics charismatic and exciting? Because if not, I am curious to understand what else there is to latch on to here?

The ping pong is incredible

[Mr Sausage]

If you hated Uncut Gems and Good Time I'm not sure there's much for you in Marty Supreme. But Marty does have a saving grace that Howard and Conny don't: he's a world class athlete who plays on the world stage. He is chasing actual greatness. Howard and Conny are petty men only trying to keep afloat as they live one minute to the next.

As to nitin's question, I mean, this is a character piece. You may as well ask that question of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. If you're not interested in the person the movie's overwhelmingly about, there's no movie for you.

[domino harvey]

I assume those who like this actually find Marty and his antics charismatic and exciting? Because if not, I am curious to understand what else there is to latch on to here?

The ping pong is incredible

Randomly remembered yesterday that the Safdies' early feature the Pleasure of Being Robbed (which is one of the better films of its kind, though that's not quite a ringing endorsement) also has a complicated protagonist who plays ping pong, so I guess the seed was planted early for this one

[Zot!]

I assume those who like this actually find Marty and his antics charismatic and exciting? Because if not, I am curious to understand what else there is to latch on to here?

The ping pong is incredible

[nitin]

If you hated Uncut Gems and Good Time I'm not sure there's much for you in Marty Supreme. But Marty does have a saving grace that Howard and Conny don't: he's a world class athlete who plays on the world stage. He is chasing actual greatness. Howard and Conny are petty men only trying to keep afloat as they live one minute to the next.

As to nitin's question, I mean, this is a character piece. You may as well ask that question of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. If you're not interested in the person the movie's overwhelmingly about, there's no movie for you.

I think a previous post of yours addressed this though, because in those examples there is an actual interest by the film and filmmaker(s) in the interiority of those characters which is absent here. It's all exterior here so you have to be into his antics.

This is really only a pretend character piece, its really a spectacle disguised as character piece

[Mr Sausage]

Whether you're into the character's psychology or into his antics, same difference. There's not much for you in these films if you're not into the individual who dominates the story.

I don't think the movie's fake, it's just about action and behaviour over psychology and introspection. The pleasure of the movie is watching Marty scramble and hustle and con people in quest of his goal, and in observing the shameless aggrandizing and ballsy maneuvering of a very specific personality. There's a lot of pleasure to be had in watching extreme personalities like this behave in this brazen way, and I certainly enjoyed every energetic minute of waiting for the shoe to drop, wondering when and how badly everything was going to fly apart. It's a very specific set of effects, sure, and not for everyone, but it excited me.

[Matt]

(Mr Sausage already said what I’m saying here, but he said it better and got to the Submit button faster): I'd counter that it might seem Marty has no inner life because he expresses every thought that comes into his head. He's not a self-reflective person. I don't know that it makes much difference to me that he does this or if his thoughts were expressed via voiceover like in a Paul Schrader script or kept unexpressed entirely. I don't agree that a character piece can only be about a character who thinks about his actions.

[nitin]

fair enough, I guess I didn't really buy any of the hustling and the contrived manner in which he got out of every scenario

[Lowry_Sam]

has no inner life because he expresses every thought that comes into his head. He's not a self-reflective person.

This is emblamatic of someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. They never mature emotionally after adolescence & into adulthood and never develop a true sense of themselves so they always need external validation from others. They shy away from anything that forces them to be self reflexive (therapy, Yoga, meditation) and they seek out people who give them attention and who reinforce the narrative they've created about the world & their place in it, while avoiding or lashing out at those who point out that their fantastitical/fictional world isn't real.

I don't agree that a character piece can only be about a character who thinks about his actions.

I agree.

[Mr Sausage]

In that case I don't think Marty fits the clinical narcissist. He has an intense belief in himself that other people's skepticism bounces off. Unlike a clinical narcissist, his ego is not fragile and his sense of self-worth not externally derived. Look at the scene with his uncle after the first tournament. His uncle tells him to his face that he lost the match, that the whole thing was for nothing, and Marty barely reacts. For a narcissist that moment would be intolerable, they would need the uncle and others to prop up their sense of self; but for Marty, it's neither here nor there. If anyone in the movie has a fragile ego and needs external validation, it's Kay Stone (tho' she's not a narcissist, either).

We're quick to diagnose people these days. But I think Marty is just an enormous egotist who's deeply self-involved. Like pretty much all the main characters, to various degrees.

[Roger Ryan]

... Chalamet’s craven manipulations... are fairly predictable. This predictability isn’t helped by the “worst case scenario” style of scene development that the script simply won’t let go of...

This is my main problem with Marty Supreme. The crazed, adrenaline-fueled complications in both Good Time and Uncut Gems worked for me because they felt carefully constructed and never took me out of the story. Marty Supreme succeeds in this aspect to a point but then starts swinging wildly with too many improbable moments and loose ends which simply broke my suspension of disbelief.

Spoiler

The exact moment when I lost faith in the film is the gas station scene when, in a Final Destination-style development, the bowling alley denizens are engulfed in an inferno allowing our protagonists to escape, yet there is no follow-up or repercussions for Marty. Shouldn't the severe injury and possible deaths of six or seven people have some consequences in this story? Otherwise, it's just a Road Runner cartoon.

The "wouldn't it be cool if this thing happened?" approach works against what should be a more mature Safdie effort.

[cantinflas]

Road Runner/Fury Road works for me. A "mature" Safdie effort is the Benny path so that side of the coin is available, although it now feels quite forced compared with Josh's naturally hyperkinetic and propulsive style.

But yeah it still wouldn't work without Chalamet's performance infusing Marty Korine with that debased drive for transcendent greatness which I never felt was successful in their previous films.

[The Curious Sofa]

As it turns out, I thoroughly enjoyed this. Although Marty is his own worst enemy, like the Safdies' previous protagonists, I didn't feel indifferent to his fate. He isn't a simpleton, and he has things going for him. Chalamet is excellent, of course, and everyone around him, from Darius Khondji and Daniel Lopatin (I'm a big fan of Oneohtrix Point Never) to Jack Fisk and the eclectic supporting cast, is at the top of their game. I wouldn't be upset if it won Best Picture.

[Matt]

Now why did I pre-order this direct from A24 for $50 (including taxes and shipping) when I now find it's cheaper literally everywhere else? Maybe they'll throw in a nice sticker or a ping pong ball or something.

[domino harvey]

The packaging will get smooshed from Amazon et al at least

[Matt]

OrbitDVD is already warning that the cover will probably arrive scuffed because of the raised metallic lettering.

[Sloper]

Really fascinating discussion in this thread. I had some thoughts about the ending, with the caveat that this is based only on one viewing:

Spoiler

The imagery in the title sequence draws an association between the embryo and the ping-pong ball (both have ‘Marty Supreme’ written on them), and there is also a link between ‘I want to be forever young’ playing over that image and ‘Everybody wants to rule the world’ playing over Marty’s final revelation when he sees his child.

Mr S. pointed out above that ‘a child can be a narcissist’s favourite extension of themselves,’ and I think this meaning goes hand in hand with the more redemptive one that sees this as a chance for Marty to mature into a better person. We think of a parent’s devotion as a supremely good thing, but there’s every chance that Marty will just regard this child as his new fixation, a replacement for table tennis – a graduation from wanting to cling to his youthful sense of inner potential to a more adult desire to extend his potential to the world around him. I found this both moving and frightening, and it’s why the ending (and the film as a whole) worked for me.

This film is set around the time my parents were born, and it was originally supposed to end in the 1980s, around the time I was born, with Marty and his granddaughter listening to the Tears for Fears song. I doubt that would have resolved any ambiguities, but perhaps it would have hammered home too obviously what (I think) the film is about. What kind of parent will Marty be, what kinds of values and aspirations does his generation impose on the next one, and how does that trickle down to the present day: what have we been taught to ‘want to be’ or to ‘want to rule’?

I felt impatient with this film for much of its running time because I struggle with stories that lack the empathy/interiority discussed above, and that invite us to observe a ‘bad’ person doing all the wrong things and suffering karmic retribution. But as the film went on, and even before the ending, I felt like two things saved it.

First, there are no sympathetic characters, so Marty is not contrasted with 'better' role models; it’s remarkable how pretty much everyone, even Rachel, turns out to be just as prone to immoral/amoral behaviour as Marty is, though I don't think these other characters are judged or condemned either. This means that Marty's setbacks are not presented as karmic, but as pure bad luck – I agree this is frustrating sometimes when the worst-case-scenario keeps happening, but ultimately I think this has a larger significance. The absence of more sympathetic characters also means that Marty comes across not as an aberrant monster, but as a product of his environment. We don’t exactly see how that has happened, but he clearly doesn’t have anything resembling a loving family, which is some kind of clue...

Secondly, I found myself rooting for Marty more and more as the story went on, until – despite not liking sport in general or table tennis in particular – I was desperate for him to win the final match against Endo (or, more accurately, against Rockwell). At the same time, I was constantly asking myself what I was rooting for. What does Marty really want, what really drives him, what are the stakes here? High off the relief of seeing him win the match, I still felt like rooting for him when he got to the hospital, but was also continuing that uncomfortable work of self-reflection: why do I want this person to find redemption and make a better life for himself and those around him?

This next bit gets a little dark…

Both my grandfathers were very abusive people, emotionally and physically. One side of the family were also Holocaust survivors (my granddad and his siblings) or were murdered in Auschwitz (their parents). When I was growing up, I would sometimes hear things from that side of the family along the lines of, ‘Well you know, the clever Jews were the ones who escaped,’ and ‘Some Jews don’t do themselves any favours, do they?’ I thought of that first line during the honey story in Marty Supreme. Yes, that is a story of selfless heroism…but it’s also a story of ingenuity and survival, a story that says, ‘You will forever be put in tight spots like this, and you will forever have to find schemes to provide for yourself and those around you,’ which was very much my granddad’s approach to life, and to raising his children. Looking at Marty’s often courageous behaviour, I find it easy to believe that he will be capable of doing similar things for his wife and children, but this is not always, or in all contexts, good news for the wife and children.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand the way my parents talk about their parents, hoping this might help me to make sense of my own life. I’m always struck, more than anything, by the blind spots, the excuse-making (‘He was always provoked, terribly provoked, I would have liked to beat her up myself’), and the sheer deafening silences around these people I never knew. They are rarely talked about in terms of their interiority, but rather in terms of their external actions and how everyone else was obliged to come to terms with these, to make those excuses, and so on. Clearly, too, these were very compelling men who were good at co-opting everyone into their way of doing things, and into ‘rooting for them’ even long after their death, to a degree that often makes me feel frustrated, angry, and outraged, but that I also feel a need to try and understand. This effort of understanding, to me, is distinct from the excuse-making and blind-eye-turning, because it means really trying to come to terms with what happened and what the world I live in now has inherited from that world. By the same token, it also means realising that my grandmothers should not have been written off as ‘pathetic victims, alcoholics, shopaholics, over-eaters, etc.’ who brought their misfortunes on themselves, which I think has a bearing on how Rachel and Fay are portrayed in this film.

One of Marty’s defining characteristics is that he’s a great salesman, and ‘salesman’ is a better word than ‘manipulator’ because a salesman always offers you something in return, like Willy Loman ‘riding on a smile and a shoeshine – and when they stop smiling back it’s an earthquake.’ The question of what Marty wants is a difficult one, but the even tougher question is, what do we want from him, and what do we get from him? Why do people find him appealing? Why are they won over by him? Or, why is Rockwell so perversely drawn to keep punishing and humiliating him?

To me, Marty is very well calibrated as a character, because although he is exploitative and unscrupulous, I don’t think he quite tips over into the kind of behaviour that would make him seem irredeemable (as my grandfathers did). At the same time, we also get no clear indication that there will be any limit on his exploitative or even abusive behaviour in the future, i.e. he could turn out to be a truly terrible husband and father. I’m never really interested in stories that save or condemn their protagonists at the end, because in my experience that’s not how life works and it’s not how people work. I like stories that invite the audience to empathise with and/or root for a protagonist while also asking uncomfortable questions about what we are rooting for, or what aspects of ourselves we see in or project onto - or resist seeing in or projecting onto - this person.

It’s so interesting that some viewers find this story irresistibly appealing in terms of schadenfreude, others appreciate it as a narrative of (ambiguous) human growth, while others simply find it off-putting and feel they are being asked to like someone who is a scumbag. These are all reactions to things that are undeniably there in the film, and they are tied up with our different worldviews or feelings about other people – whoever Marty reminds us of, perhaps. It definitely says something about me, for instance, that I am so eager for this character to win, and at the same time so unnerved by the implications of his victory.