The film “Marty Supreme” first released on Christmas day, and while it seems like the film wouldn’t get a big turnout, it made 9.5 million dollars on opening day alone. The film scored a 93% from critics from Rotten Tomatoes and received a 83% from the audience, and it became A24’s second most grossing movie, only behind Marvel’s “Captain America: Civil War.”
The film explores the upcoming table tennis player, Marty Mauser, and shows how his life unfolds. Through misfortune and luck, Mauser goes through it all in order to achieve his vision of greatness for himself. While everyone is telling him this dream is unachievable, he never stops trying, no matter what life throws at him.
When I watched this film, I immediately noticed how it was different from most movies on the big screen today. There weren’t a ton of attention grabbers or product placement being shoved in my face. The film did confuse me at times, but it also kept me emotionally invested.
Timothée Chalamet played Mauser in such a way that showed his many flaws, but also humanized him so that the audience would continue the cycle of feeling bad for him while also getting angry at his actions. A lot of people didn’t enjoy this movie for this reason because they said that he lacked redeemable qualities, but I think they are missing the point of the film. The whole point is that he is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve his dream, and I think it was realistically portrayed. Not every human on earth is redeemable, they just made his character realistic. I found myself reacting more in the movie theater to Mauser’s actions than any other movie I have watched in a very long time.
I also enjoyed how they also gave the side characters multi faceted personalities. I particularly liked how they portrayed Odessa A’zion’s character, Rachel Mizler. Even though most movies give a woman a damsel in distress role and the perfect partner role, this film gave her flaws, made her lie and even stooped her down to Mauser’s level. I think this made it easier to believe they would end up getting together and just made the film that more realistic.
While I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, some criticism is inevitable. I didn’t enjoy how Mauser never actually had any real consequences for his actions. Most of what he did the whole movie was lie and cheat everyone around him, and as a movie that was realistic in every other way, it was hard to believe that he had virtually no repercussions. Most of his consequences were a slap on the wrist, or Kevin O’Leary character Milton Rockwell spanking him. This was pretty unsatisfying to me and I wish the film had explored Mauser having to deal with the bad decisions he made.
Another gripe I have with the film was the weirdly freaky scenes. I know that it helped further the plot, but I also think that there was a surplus of scenes like that and it didn’t need to be there. Other than that, I really enjoyed the film and it felt different than a lot of the other films I have watched this year. I loved the character exploration and how everything tied back together. I would highly recommend watching this film just because of how well it was made and the character development throughout.
