Satchel Paige famously said, “Don’t look back, something might be gaining on you.” And while Paige never makes an appearance in Marty Supreme, we can assume that the movie’s subject, Marty Mauser, heard those words and took them to heart, as everything in the film is a reflection of the character and his overwhelming, breakneck approach to life. Mauser is a 23-year-old world-class table tennis player in the early 1950s, and to say he’s supremely confident would be an obscene understatement. It’s not exactly clear if that confidence is pure or if it’s his way of always going 1000 percent in order to outrun any possible thing that might hold him back, but the result is the same, in that he talks hard, goes hard, and never ever stops, and on some level you have to give him credit for it, which a lot of people begrudgingly do.
Mauser is played by Timothée Chalamet, and this is maybe the best he’s ever been, with an uninterrupted flow of words emptying out of him and a smile that looks like someone is yanking up the corners of his mouth with wire. Even his shirt collar struts. And the movie mirrors Mauser’s intensity, with constant momentum, people talking loudly over each other, often with other noise on top of that, and endless needle drops, largely of 1980s new wave music. Although, realistically, this is also the typical style of the movie’s director, Josh Safdie, who has usually made such high-impact movies with his brother, Benny, including 2019’s Uncut Gems. But it’s good to know your strengths, and I suppose the director does, even if a Safdie movie tends to diminish the further I get from it, as I end up wondering where, exactly, it’s left us. And this one is no different, since I’m not sure it’s actually got all that much to say. But this level of volume can be fun enough while it lasts, even if you feel a bit empty once things quiet down.
Marty Supreme is in theaters.
