I’ll be honest, I didn’t know much about Marty Supreme when I walked into the theater to catch one of the last movies coming out on the 2025 movie schedule. I knew the basics, I knew it starred Timothee Chalamet as a ping pong player, and it was directed by Josh Safdie. I vaguely remembered that it was more or less based on a true story, but otherwise, I tried to go in as blind as possible, because I wanted it all to be a surprise. And boy was it! It is about table tennis, sure, but it’s not just a sports movie. In fact, table tennis is really just a Macguffin.
Warning: there are slight spoilers ahead from the beginning of the movie, so proceed with caution if you haven’t seen it yet.
The first scene of the movie has Marty (Chalamet) meeting his girlfriend Rachel (Odessa A’zion) in the back of the shoe store where he works in the 1950s. They immediately have sex, and as the opening credits roll, they are accompanied by swimming sperm headed towards an unfertilized egg. It’s really quite funny, but I didn’t know if I should be laughing, at least until the rest of the crowd in the theater did. Wait? This is a comedy? My expectations are already being blown apart.
Marty, it turns out, is indeed one of the best table tennis players in the world. He’s also a giant screw up. He’s constantly broke and hustling for money. He’s basically a degenerate with an outsized ego who is always on the run from those he owes money to and his girlfriend’s husband. Yeah, it turns out that Rachel is married, and yeah, she’s also pregnant with Marty’s baby, now. This is both dark and comical. It’s definitely not what I was expecting.
I Just Let It Flow
Sometimes I get frustrated when a movie isn’t what I think it’s going to be, and I have to remind myself that some of my favorite movie-watching experiences are when I don’t know anything about a movie and I just let it wash over me. In fact, that was exactly why I went into this one blind. I like Josh Safdie, I like Chalamet and Gwyneth Paltrow, so I wanted to be surprised. I was more surprised than I anticipated, but I loved the movie, so it worked how it was supposed to.
Marty Supreme isn’t a sports movie like, say, Any Given Sunday or Moneyball. As I said, the sport is really a Macguffin that is used to push the action forward, but the movie is really about how much of a screw up and how unlikeable Marty is. He is a pretty terrible person who only thinks of himself and leaves a path of destruction in his wake. He’s ruining his life and the lives of those around him with his singular goal to be the best, to hell with the consequences.
It’s also a movie that I’ve not stopped thinking about since I saw it a few weeks ago. My initial thoughts on the movie have evolved, and while I liked it right away, I didn’t love it. Now I love it, and I hope everyone goes out to see this holiday season. It won’t make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but it will make you think. And I mean that in the best way.
