Marty Supreme:”I have a purpose”
- eclectic Stefan
- 14 hours ago
- 4 min read
It’s a sport that’s fast moving, cut throat, strategic, and fiercely competitive but it’s not swimming, motor racing, sprinting or football. It’s table tennis. And when I say table tennis, I don’t mean ping pong. To competitors, it’s definitely table tennis.
Shoe salesman Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet) is an obsessive local table tennis champion. He works to save money in order to travel to challenge the best table tennis players in the world in his belief that he will reign supreme and become the world champion.
Nothing and no-one will disrupt his plans—not his uncle who wants to make him manager of his shoe shop; not his romantic interest with whom he has torrid sexual encounters; not a shortage of cash to fund his travels; not a fierce gangster who pursues Marty because Marty lost his dog.
Top left: Rachel Mizler (Odessa A'Zion), Marty's romantic partner
Top right: Milton Rockwell (Kevin O'Leary), wealthy benefactor
Bottom left: Ezra Mishkin (Abel Ferrara), mystery man & dog lover
Bottom right: Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow), actor
Marty deceives, schemes, seduces and steals from his family & acquaintances to achieve his purpose.
He undoubtedly is talented. That talent comes with a dose of hubris. Perhaps hubris is a by-product in the pursuit of a champion’s dream to achieve the top rung of a sport.
Endo (Koto Kawaguchi), Japanese table tennis champion
Marty encounters a road bump in his pursuit of the championship when he is vanquished by his Japanese nemesis, Endo (Koto Kawaguchi), who uses a special wooden paddle that troubles Marty and affects his confidence in his playing ability. The loss hardens his resolve to win at all costs.
Marty becomes a sideshow
In the meantime, he debases his talent by playing exhibition matches to earn money during which he is expected to lose in order to promote Rockwell Ink, his sponsor’s pen manufacturing business. He becomes a sideshow act, playing against a sea lion, kissing a pig and performing in exhibition tournaments playing on miniature tables and using pots and pans as paddles.
The film’s pace is matched by the frenetic, yet controlled, exchange of bat on ball strokes between players during intense table tennis championship tournaments. The players are fierce in their skills. Their power shots require opposing players to stand across the room to return the strokes.
Marty Supreme Official Trailer
The dialogue is equally fast paced. Marty is a fast talker in all ways. He can talk his way out of almost any mess in which he finds himself. His words can also help him find his way into trouble as well. He manages to get himself into one dilemma after another.
He is a master of avoidance, whether it's evading his girlfriend, uncle, debtors or table tennis officials. Mostly, he avoids responsibility. It’s all about the ball, the paddle and playing table tennis.
Everything Marty says and does is for Marty’s benefit. Friendships, family and all other relationships are littered with deception, emotional pain and suffering. Ultimately, the final humiliation is upon himself. Every door Marty attempts to open is slammed in his face due to his conceit. He may win table tennis competitions but the very act of winning means he becomes the agent of his own humiliation. He is always found short in life; he wins on the table tennis table but loses in the affairs of life.
Marty is not an everyman. Instead, he believes in every man for himself. Specifically, he believes in Marty for Marty’ sake. I approached this movie expecting to encounter a self-obsessed person without any redeeming features. You would be correct on that point. He is hubristic, a schemer and totally self-serving. Marty leaves a trail of emotional destruction and relational devastation.
Marty's Epiphany
Except when Marty meets his baby daughter. There is a glimmer of hope. He experiences an epiphany that changes him. Doors finally open. He sees a human—his baby daughter—who is vulnerable and opens the world to the reality that there are experiences in the world, beyond Marty’s self-importance, that transcend his own selfishness and inner-looking world view.
“My life is a product of all the choices I have made.” Marty Mauser
Marty’s vulnerability is revealed. His emotions are exposed. He can see the world beyond his own narrow field of vision. Finally, Marty’s veneer is stripped bare; he finds a purpose.
Ultimately, Marty Supreme is not so much about table tennis as it is about self-realisation as a human being. However, you must be willing to work through Marty’s destructive narcissism to get to that point.
FILM EXTRAS: WE COULD HAVE BEEN CHAMPIONS
ON THE WATERFRONT (1954)
Dockworker Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) had been an up-and-coming boxer until powerful local mob boss Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) persuaded him to throw a fight. When a longshoreman is murdered before he can testify about Friendly's control of the Hoboken waterfront, Terry teams up with the dead man's sister Edie (Eva Marie Saint) and the streetwise priest Father Barry (Karl Malden) to testify himself, against the advice of Friendly's lawyer, Terry's older brother Charley (Rod Steiger).
RAGING BULL (1980)
The story of a middleweight boxer Jake LaMotta (Robert De Niro) attempting to earn his first shot at the middleweight crown. He falls in love with a woman from the Bronx. The inability to express his feelings enters into the ring and eventually takes over his life. He eventually is sent into a downward spiral that costs him everything.
I, TONYA (2017)
Talented figure skater Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) becomes the first American woman to complete a triple axel during a competition. Her world comes crashing down when her ex-husband conspires to injure Nancy Kerrigan, a fellow Olympic hopeful, in a poorly conceived attack that forces the young woman to withdraw from the national championship. Harding's life and legacy instantly become tarnished as she's forever associated with one of the most infamous scandals in sports history.
