Marty Supreme: Timothee Chalamet has the touch!

It’s a film set in the fifties of New York after World War 2. Everyone is working jobs they do not like. Marty Mauser makes that clear, and for that reason I began to root for him. The audience does not know how or why he thinks he’s a champion ping pong player and that he can represent America at the British Open, but he explains:

The American Table Tennis Association is nothing but two guys at a table somewhere.

But Marty makes you believe that in New York, there is an underground ping pong betting thing where he can make enough money to travel to London to play the game. Not boxing, not MMA cage fights but ping pong. His partner in the table tennis grift is a New York taxi driver Wally (played magnificently by Tyler The Creator) and a big black dog called Moses (that belongs to a mobster). The two travel out of town to hustle money from white boys - will remind you of the grift in ‘White Men Can’t Jump’ - and their short escape is so joyful you will remember Jai and Veeru’s escape from prison in Sholay and the sound of laughter at the beginning of the song ‘Ye Dostee” (Compelled to spell it like that since we have had to learn to spell ‘Timothy’ as ‘Timothee’ when it comes to Mr. Humongously Talented Chalamet!).

That brings us to the music that defines the chaos of a wild ride that the film is. Fats Domino fits perfectly with Peter Gabriel’s ‘I Have The Touch’, babies crying in unison meets ‘Everybody Wants to Rule The World’ by Tears For Fears, ‘Ain't No Mountain’ is perfect fit with ‘The Order of Death’… Daniel Lopatin’s original score is phenomenal as well. What joy is this chaos?

Now that I’ve said chaos so many times, let me explain. We have been conditioned to fall in love with rogues, the bad boys, the hustlers because we can then go back to living the dull life of a show salesman. Rachel (the gorgeous Odessa A’zion), Marty’s childhood sweetheart, is no ordinary gal. She is hustling to be with him too. He says she’s a friend, a sister, and even ‘we just met’, denies that he’s the father when she gets pregnant and damns her with, “I have a purpose, you don’t. And if you think that’s some kind of a blessing, it’s not.”

So why do we love him? Ask Gwenyth Paltrow, who plays Kay - a woman who was once a star, now an accessory to her horrid wealthy husband who owns a pen company. She escapes her reality to get quick and dirty with Marty who is way below her social status, and Marty makes love to Kay because one she’s stunning, and he can steal her jewellery (to get to Tokyo to play ping pong) and to get back the awful husband Mr. Rockwell (played by the Shark Tank MAGA guy Kevin O’Leary who treats Marty like a Shark Tank contestant, ugh!)

Marty’s need to be acknowledged as the champion at table tennis makes him take so many risks that you go through what can be only described as a flight that is in a state of turbulent, violent storm for 152 minutes. You are at once horrified when Marty announces to reporters about a match in London, “I’ll do to him what Auschwitz didn’t.” and then laugh, a little uncomfortably when Marty says, “It’s okay to say that because I’m Jewish.”

Josh Safdie’s Uncut Gems made us feel the same way with Adam Sandler playing Howard Ratner. But here Chalamet playing table tennis is matchless. This actor convinced me that he was better Dylan than Dylan himself in A Complete Unknown’ and in this film he makes us believe that he actually pulled off the trick shots and the volleys (or are they rallies) when he plays ping pong in New York (undershirts are going to become popular, I say!) or London and in the final, most satisfying match against the reigning champion Koto Endo (played by monklike Kawaguchi Endo). Even if you have never been near a table tennis table, let alone played the game, you will love the meditative almost reverent game that the Japanese champion plays and the wild pushy game that the ‘defeated American’ play each time they meet. Marty plays the game like the man in a hurry that he is. Hurry to make it big.

The audience in turn become Rachel who wants to keep him, the uncle who owns the shoe store who wants to handcuff him to the store, the mobster who owns Moses who wants to kill him, Kate who can’t resist him, Kate’s husband who hates him enough to literally spank him but wants to exploit his talent, and everyone else who clap for him and yet shake their heads like writer Pico Iyer (who plays the disapproving head of table tennis federation). What?! Pico Iyer? He who showed us how to be Aflame in silence?

That’s not all, Fran Dresher, Sarah Bernhardt, Issac Mizrahi show up too. In such tiny doses in the chaos caused by Marty, you blink and you miss them, and then stay through the credits to confirm their presence. In real life we too experienced the appearance of Shahid Kapoor who presented the film. I cheer loudly for A24 who bring such awesomeness to audiences who refuse to fall for the relentless assault of Indian propaganda films wrapped in loud patriotism.

The film is as crazy as watching Marty agreeing to - no, compelled to - playing table tennis with a seal, but refusing the anti semitic ‘Loser will kiss a pig’ deal in Tokyo. A definite contender for best actor and also sound design… So don’t miss Chalamet Supreme… I mean Marty Supreme.