The Seduction of Certainty in “Marty Supreme” Works Without Asking for Approval – front mezz junkies, Theater News

The Film Review: “Marty Supreme“

By Ross

Watching the Oscar-nominated film, “Marty Supreme“, I couldn’t help but think about how quickly momentum gathered around its charismatic star as the presumed frontrunner for Best Actor. Timothée Chalamet (“Call Me by Your Name“) is a talent, that’s for sure, but after seeing the film, that consensus makes a lot of sense. There is something completely compelling about his dense, committed performance built around a character who is deliberately difficult to like. As played expertly by Chalamet, this ping-pong player dreaming of celebratory status is an exhaustingly fast-talking, self-mythologizing con artist whose charm wears thin even as his orbit keeps expanding. The feat isn’t that we admire Marty, but that we understand him completely, often against our better judgment. It’s the kind of work the Academy reliably responds to: technically impressive, emotionally abrasive, and sustained with remarkable control right up until the teary end.

Marty Mauser himself is a study in narcissism, a man who moves through the world assuming accommodation as a birthright. Everyone around him shifts from adoration to irritation to weary resignation, yet they keep giving in, seduced not so much by affection as by his sheer certainty. The performance lets us feel both sides at once: the intoxicating pull of someone who believes in himself absolutely, and the mounting frustration of watching that belief flatten everyone else out and reduce them to props in his narrative. Failure “doesn’t even enter my consciousness,” he says, but is powerfully refuted by a surprising admirer with “maybe it should.”

As directed impressively by writer Josh Safdie (Good Time), we’re invited to “get” him while simultaneously recoiling from his chaos, his opportunism, and his relentless self-centered drive. That friction is where the performance lives, and it’s what makes it so compelling to watch even when the character becomes nearly intolerable. The film around him mirrors that instability. “Marty Supreme” is a hodgepodge stew of complications, throwing tonal shifts, plot turns, and thematic ideas at the audience with little interest in tidiness or a natural arch in storytelling. Written by Safdie and Ronald Bronstein (“Uncut Gems“), it’s exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure, anchored by striking visuals and strong, often surprising supporting work. Fran Drescher (“The Nanny“), Sandra Bernhard (“The King of Comedy“), Gwyneth Paltrow (“Shakespeare in Love“), and the phenomenal Odessa A’zion (“Hellraiser“) all lean into less familiar, less flattering registers, offering nuanced performances that resist their usual shorthand. Still, the narrative itself feels scattered, constantly keeping us engaged while withholding a clear sense of destination beyond the must-have rematch that awaits us all in Tokyo. We’re left asking not just where the story is going (beyond that match), but what we’re meant to want from it.

That uncertainty crystallizes in the film’s final stretch, which gestures toward something like redemption. As a viewer, I was entertained; as a psychotherapist, I wasn’t convinced. Marty may glimpse generosity or connection in fleeting, sincere moments, but nothing in the film persuades me that those moments will last. This is a man who will always choose himself, regardless of the gift he’s handed. Perhaps that’s the point: the ending asks us to decide whether we believe in his goodness, even as we suspect it’s temporary; to get behind this brief alignment rather than have hope for a transformation. If so, the film’s final challenge isn’t to redeem “Marty Supreme“, but to test our willingness to keep hoping anyway.