Timothée Chalamet’s ‘Marty Supreme’ is his career best performance, but how chaotic and exhausting this Oscar nominated film can get
Language: English
Director: Josh Safdie
Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ronald Bronstein, Odessa A’zion and more
Deeply engaging, but can get deeply exhausting too. Performance wise Timothée Chalamet has killed it. But is the story of hustler ‘Marty Supreme’ worth telling is a big question mark.
The film is about
Timothée Chalamet who takes a striking turn in Marty Supreme, undergoing a dramatic physical and emotional transformation to play Marty Mauser, a fiercely driven table tennis prodigy. No doubt about the fact that Timothée Chalamet has done a good job by keeping the character raw, compulsive and wickedly ambitious with absolutely no ethics.
Minor details have been well taken care of including the houses shown to the costumes. Filmmaker Josh Safdie’s longtime vision for Marty involved ‘pockmarked skin, acne, and scars’ on Chalamet’s preternaturally unblemished complexion “to show a history of Marty living a rough life on the streets of the Lower East Side, and make it authentic. His raw look with lanky physique and effortless style is what makes him standout. It shows how much effort has been put in to make Timothée Chalamet look the way he does in ‘Marty Supreme’.
Filmmaker Josh Safdie’s direction and editing, co-written with Ronald Bronstein does create an anxiety and gives you the reason to sit back, but after a point, the film becomes an overstretch and loses its direction. The character of Marty played by Chalamet is not one to look forward to, especially when his traits show filthy ambition and lack of integrity. Glorifying an egoistic and disruptive character is not what Safdie should have done. You can show the vulnerability and the over ambition, but not glorify it.
Marty Supreme, despite being a sports film, table tennis is just a backdrop, it shows human nature and the extent one can go for the sake of ambition. We all realise how obsessed Marty was in pursuing his dream, but he mostly chooses the wrong path and that can be damaging for young viewers who are trying to get inspired by him.
The film on the whole lacked direction and a proper vision. It has been a clean sweep at several award ceremonies but is an absolute muddled up plot. Marty Supreme starts as a sports movie, but end up showing something that lacks direction and proper execution.
Rating : 2 and half (out of 5)
WATCH the trailer of ‘Marty Supreme’ here:
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