Marty Supreme: a Review - Supremely Over-Rated

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. An overlong, annoying, grating and irritating movie devoid of drama, comedy, meaning, and purpose.

Marty Supreme, written and directed by Josh Safdie, is a dramedy that chronicles the travails of an arrogant, narcissistic, world-class ping pong player/con-man in the 1950’s.

The film, which stars Timothee Chalamet in the titular role, hit theatres on Christmas and has made over $100 million on a $70 million budget. It has also garnered nine Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Chalamet), Best Original Screenplay and Best Cinematography.

Director Josh Safdie, formerly of the directing duo the Safdie brothers, is the darling of the hipster set. His previous film (directed by the Safdie brothers) was Uncut Gems, which was adored by critics and despised by me.

That film featured Adam Sandler in the lead role playing a grotesquely repugnant gambling addict on an extended odyssey. Marty Supreme follows a similar roadmap, it tells the story of a grotesquely repugnant ping-pong player who is an arrogant asshole and compulsive bullshit artist on an extended odyssey.

I have heard in my life a lot of people complain about one movie or another by saying that ‘there was no one to root for’, or something along those lines. I understand that criticism but have never found it compelling. I don’t need to root for someone to enjoy a movie…at all.

But the problem with Marty Supreme…and with Uncut Gems…is that I found myself absolutely despising every single character on-screen for the duration of the film. I wasn’t rooting for them or against them…I was just wanting them to go away. I also was mystified by these lead characters and the actors playing them because they lacked charisma and magnetism and yet were supposed to be charismatic and magnetic. Shrug.

The problem with Uncut Gems and Marty Supreme is not unlikable characters, but rather unbelievable one-dimensional characters that are unlikeable.  

What bothered me about Marty Supreme is that it is much too sprawling and meandering a movie to hold one’s attention on such a fruitless ride with such a repulsive character as the lead.

The film never grabs you by the neck and demands your attention because it lacks focus and dramatic verve. Marty goes from one frying pan into the fire situation after another, and none of them are the least bit compelling…just repetitive and grating.

Marty’s odyssey takes him all over the world and puts him into conflict with rich and powerful men of varying degrees wherever he goes…and while the rich and powerful don’t come across very well at all, Marty comes across even worse. Marty is such a relentless, gigantic douchebag that this movie feels like a piece of anti-proletariat agit-prop.

I’ve heard the argument that Marty Supreme is about ‘the pursuit of greatness’ and I find that argument to be sorely lacking. Marty is not pursuing greatness – the truth is ping-pong is a distant second place in his hierarchy to his ego and his baser instincts. He isn’t pursuing greatness he is pursuing his own gratification and self-aggrandizement.

What I find fascinating is that Josh Safdie is Jewish (and obviously his brother is too) and yet in both Uncut Gems and Marty Supreme he has turned his Jewish protagonists into the most awful human beings imaginable animated by nothing more than Jewish stereotypes. They literally have zero redeeming qualities. I am not sure why he has done that, but he has definitely done it. It is so bad that if a non-Jewish filmmaker had made those two films, they would have been pilloried for being anti-Semitic…and rightfully so.

I have intentionally avoided delving too deeply into the morass that is the plot of Marty Supreme in order to avoid spoilers and because it is annoying to even try and recall. Just know that it is all over the place and none of it is worth paying attention to.

There are so many worthless and wandering scenes and sequences in this film it made my head hurt…for example there’s an entire chunk of the movie dedicated to Marty and a dog that is so relentlessly inane and absurd as to be infuriating.

Timothee Chalamet is the favorite to win Best Actor at this year’s Academy Awards, and I get why that is and it has nothing to do with this particular performance but rather with how he has masterfully positioned himself in the industry over the course of his career.

The reality is that Chalamet’s Marty is not a masterclass in acting. It is like a reality tv star performance crossed with a twitter troll come to life. Chalamet has one very good scene in the film and it is his final one…but beyond that he is less acting than he is play-acting…and badly at that.

Something that aggravated me throughout the film is that it is set in the 1950’s and yet Chalamet, and everyone else, speaks in a modern vernacular and acts in a modern way. I understand this is intentional on the part of Safdie – as he uses modern music throughout too, but I found it annoying as it took me out of the story – a story I was struggling to stay in to begin with.

Gwyneth Paltrow plays Kay Stone, a former movie star now trophy wife, with whom Marty has an affair. She does the best she can with a rather thinly written character, and has one scene where she realistically gets frantic, but beyond that there’s not much to see here.

Cinematographer Darius Khondji does his usual supreme – pardon the pun, work on the film. It is well-shot and well-lit, but that doesn’t make its storytelling failures any more palatable.

The success of the Safdie brothers in general, and Marty Supreme in particular, is a mystery to me. I find this film, and all of the Safdie brother’s films, to be relentlessly vacuous, vapid and venal. That critics and hipsters adore them doesn’t make me question my feelings about these films, but reinforces my feelings about critics and hipsters instead.

Ultimately, I cannot think of anyone who I know who would enjoy Marty Supreme, or even appreciate it as a work of cinematic art…and that is because I do not think it is much a work of cinematic art at all.

If you’re a Safdie brothers fan and loved Uncut Gems, then you will no doubt enjoy the interminably long, rather irritating roller coaster ride that is Marty Supreme. For everyone else…there’s nothing to see here.

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