Marty Supreme – madness or genius?

Equal parts passion and weird energy, Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme doesn’t follow the usual playbook, which is both its strength and its stumbling block. Part sports drama, part character study, part genre experiment, the film is pushed well outside standard sports-film dynamics, focusing on character friction and unpredictable narrative turns. The result is a long, uneven ride (running roughly two and a half hours) that critics have mostly praised for ambition and craft, even if not everyone loves it. In many ways, the beginning of the movie felt to me like Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit, but with the audience thrown in at the deep end right from the start. Only with less drugs, and more violence. It certainly earns the 16-age rating. Marty Supreme is screening in Ster-Kinekor theatres, NuMetro cinemas, and at The Bioscope.

Marty Supreme is loosely based on the life of real-world ping-pong hustler Marty Reisman, but the movie isn’t out to give you tidy emotions or easy paths to triumph. It’s meaner and messier. At the centre is Timothée Chalamet as Marty Mauser, a hustler with big ambitions and the simultaneous ability to charm and antagonise people, often in the same scene. 

Chalamet’s performance has reshaped how many people see him as an actor, particularly after the spectrum of skill he has already demonstrated between Dune and Wonka. His performance in Marty Supreme has earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy and a Critics’ Choice Award for Best Actor.

Supporting roles from Gwyneth Paltrow, Odessa A’zion, Tyler Okonma (Tyler, the Creator), Kevin O’Leary and Fran Drescher round out an eclectic cast. The score, composed by Daniel Lopatin (aka Oneohtrix Point Never), is another standout. It pulses with synth-heavy, New Wave–inspired energy that feels oddly right for a retro story. Although the movie is set in the 1950s, with plenty of references to World War Two, the movie features a number of music hits from the 1980s, most notably Alphaville’s Forever Young and Tears for Fears’ Everybody Wants to Rule the World. Safdie described the soundtrack as adding “this mythic legendary quality to youth”. It also captured the sense of music played by a madman, as Alphaville put it.

Reception among critics has been strong overall: Marty Supreme holds a high critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes and an “universal acclaim” tier on Metacritic, with praise for its direction, performances, score and editing. But audience reactions are more mixed, with some viewers finding the narrative unruly or the character dynamics frustrating, rather than compelling. 

Awards and nominations for Marty Supreme have flooded in, with 3 promising Golden Globe nominations (for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, Best Screenplay – Motion Picture, and Chalamet’s nomination for Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy) and 8 Critics’ Choice nominations (for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Casting and Ensemble, Best Production Design, Best Editing, Best Score, and Best Actor), although Chalamet’s award for Best Actor was the only win.

In the end, Marty Supreme is a bit of a gamble: inventive in style and sound, occasionally frustrating in execution, and full of creative risks that don’t always pay off. But it’s hard to watch and forget quickly, for better or worse. While I found the first 20 minutes uncompelling, and the storyline ping-ponged (excuse the pun) quite a bit, Marty Supreme is an enjoyable cinematic experience overall.