We last saw Timothée Chalamet, wry and enigmatic, as a version of Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown. He returns in a project that sits at a surprising angle to James Mangold’s too-polite biopic. Josh Safdie’s stunning, clattering new film could hardly be more different in tone.
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The study of an insufferable table-tennis prodigy, Marty Supreme crashes through ceilings, hurtles down fire escapes and evades bullets with a breathlessness that feels positively unhealthy. Whereas A Complete Unknown simmered, this project boils over.
Yet there is a connection. Set in the early 1950s, Marty Supreme has the promiscuous energy and black wit of Dylan in early storytelling mode: sometimes Highway 61 Revisited, sometimes Motorpsycho Nitemare. Marty is forever encountering older men with guns reminiscent of the angry farmer in the latter song.
The structure of this long film is simple. We begin with Marty Mauser travelling to London for the British Open, where, true to his impulsive fashion, he burns every useful bridge before returning to New York with his place at the upcoming world championships, in Tokyo, now doubtful. The middle section has him creating new problems as soon as he solves old ones. We end with the trip to Japan.
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The second act has much in common with Josh and Benny Safdie’s rightly admired Uncut Gems, from 2019. Whereas Benny steadied the pace in his recent, oddly low-temperature The Smashing Machine, his older brother is back with another deeply stressful race against time on the streets of Manhattan.
Marty has to cope with news that his married girlfriend, Rachel (the splendid Odessa A’zion), is pregnant at the same time as he’s philandering cynically with a faded movie star, Kay Stone (a welcome Gwyneth Paltrow). There is an issue with a missing dog owned by a predicably terrifying Abel Ferrara. Fran Drescher does something miraculous with her tiny role as Marty’s tragically misused mother.
But this is not Uncut Gems. Inspired loosely by the story of Marty Reisman, US tennis-table champion of 1958, Marty Supreme is – despite the crafty use of 1980s pop songs such as Alphaville’s Forever Young and Tears for Fears’ Everybody Wants to Rule the World – deeply rooted in a particular time.
Though we suspect he may burn up before consolidating his talent, Marty is representative of a class of youthful American arrogance that, during the United States’ postwar ascendancy, deeply irritated the rest of the world. Why should I be ashamed to demand what I want? Why should I downplay my own genius? Chalk flew up! You cannot be serious!
There is also something of early Philip Roth characters in Chalamet’s bravely abrasive performance – the sense of young men breaking free from constricting heritage to embrace new possibilities. Safdie is, if anything, less forgiving than Roth to the environment being escaped.
As was the case in Uncut Gems, New York is, here, a genuinely terrifying, always bizarre place. Darius Khondji’s cinematography revels in the oily corners within which broken faces can unexpectedly appear. Daniel Lopatin’s thumping electronic score injects unease into even the most superficially mundane situations. The emerald-green lawns of Eisenhower’s famously comfortable suburbs may as well be on a moon of Saturn.
Yet, for all the trademark Safdie unease, Marty Supreme remains an enormously good time at the cinema. The 150 minutes speed by as we encounter an array of brilliantly cast cameos. Géza Röhrig, star of the Auschwitz drama Son of Saul, makes risky reference to that role with a chilling, surreal anecdote. Penn Jillette gets to do crazed maniac. Look out also for a glimpse of David Mamet. Here is an intelligent entertainment as generously stuffed as the greatest 19th-century novel. They rarely make them like this any more.
In cinemas from St Stephen’s Day
