Happy birthday to Timothée Chalamet. On Saturday, he marked the occasion. He is 30 years old and running a high fever — not because he is lying on his parents’ couch, but because of Oscar fever. In recent weeks, while maintaining a strong public presence to promote his latest film, “Marty Supreme,” Chalamet has offered candid assessments in interviews of his past performances.
Chalamet broke through in 2017 with his portrayal of Elio Perlman, a Jewish teenager, in the luminous coming-of-age drama “Call Me by Your Name,” earning his first Oscar nomination. Last year, he received a second nomination for playing a young Bob Dylan in “A Complete Unknown.” Reaching his fourth decade without an Academy Award, Chalamet has made clear, is something he finds frustrating. For seven years, as he put it, he has been delivering “top-level” performances, and heading into the current awards season, he is keen to ensure Academy voters remember that.
On the one hand, it is hard not to see a certain audacity in this stance; on the other, he is absolutely right — he is extraordinarily talented. It is fitting that he makes these claims while promoting a film whose protagonist displays brazen confidence in his abilities and a complete lack of restraint in proving it. For his role in “Marty Supreme,” Chalamet is likely not only to secure a third Oscar nomination, but to have an excellent chance of taking home the statuette.
Beyond Chalamet’s performance, Josh Safdie’s film boasts strong writing and direction, along with an original ensemble cast. “A two-and-a-half-hour epic about the life of a young Jewish ping-pong player in New York in 1952” sounds like an absurd premise. In Safdie’s hands, it becomes a kinetic tour de force of Jewish New York energy, extending and amplifying themes from his earlier work focused on marginal, competitive and scheming characters.
This is Safdie’s first film since 2008 made without his brother Benny. While Benny directed the disappointing “The Smashing Machine” this year, about wrestler Mark Kerr, Josh opted for a “smaller” sport but delivered a far more ambitious and distinctive film. Though the Safdies are known as a filmmaking duo, they also have a “third brother” of sorts in Ronald Bronstein, who served as co-writer and editor on four of their films. After the brothers split creatively, Bronstein continued in that role with Josh — perhaps helping explain the striking gap between the two films the brothers released this year.
The character of Marty Mauser, played by Chalamet and nicknamed “Marty Supreme,” is loosely based on Jewish ping-pong player Marty Reisman. Set in 1952, just a few years after the Holocaust, the historical backdrop becomes nuclear fuel for the protagonist’s ambition. At one point, Marty describes his success in ping-pong as “the ultimate victory over Hitler.”
One segment includes a flashback to a wild Holocaust story told by a Jewish ping-pong player named Bela Kletzki, portrayed by Hungarian actor Géza Röhrig. Röhrig, who is not Jewish but was raised from childhood by a Jewish family, is best known for his role in the harrowing Holocaust film “Son of Saul” (2015). The film later also settles scores with the enslavement of the Jews in the era of the pharaohs — in a way best left unrevealed. In the climactic scene near the end, Marty is pressured to perform an act that would have been considered “die rather than transgress” during the darkest chapters of Jewish history.
With his lean frame, pencil mustache, oily complexion, rapid-fire thinking and speech and relentless drive, Marty represents a striking variation on the ambitious Jewish figure who stops at nothing. Mauser belongs to a lineage of Jewish characters who inspire both admiration and revulsion, figures that emerged in postwar Jewish American literature — such as Philip Roth’s “Goodbye, Columbus” (1959) — and in cinema, including “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz” (1972), adapted from Mordecai Richler’s 1959 novel.
Comparable figures include Lenny Cantrow, who betrays his new bride for the perfect blond shiksa in Elaine May’s brilliant “The Heartbreak Kid” (1972). There is little these protagonists will not do for social mobility and financial success. Similar characters appear later as well — the driven high school student in Wes Anderson’s “Rushmore” (1998), or Adam Sandler’s brilliantly portrayed Jewish diamond dealer Howard Ratner in the Safdie brothers’ “Uncut Gems” (2019), whose gambling debts spiral out of control.
Marty Mauser’s ambition mirrors the momentum and audacity with which Safdie directs the film. We first meet Marty as a shoe salesman on the Lower East Side, working in a shop owned by his uncle, Murray, played by Larry Sloman. Marty’s talent as a salesman is clear, as is his willingness to persuade a customer to buy shoes a full size too small. Uncle Murray envisions Marty in management, but the single-minded protagonist has one dream: to become world champion in ping-pong.
In the opening scenes, Marty has sex in the shop’s storeroom with Rachel Mizler, played by Odessa A’zion in a performance that could earn her an Oscar nomination. Rachel is a young, married neighbor who lives in the same cramped, rundown building as Marty’s family. Her pregnancy leads to a deranged microscopic image of sperm swimming toward an egg, one of which succeeds in fertilizing it.
The sequence is beautifully shot by cinematographer Darius Khondji and set to 1980s new wave music, part of the film’s strikingly anachronistic soundtrack, which blends seamlessly with the original score by Daniel Lopatin. Before our eyes, the fertilized egg transforms into a ping-pong ball bearing the film’s title. It is a delirious opening that recalls the journey through the protagonist’s digestive system at the start of “Uncut Gems,” ironically establishing Marty’s mythic mission and the time frame of the story.
Marty travels to a tournament in London, where he crosses paths with Kay Stone, a famous movie star played by Gwyneth Paltrow in a strong performance. Though she retired from acting before Marty was born, the age and status gap does not deter him from pursuing her with relentless determination. His boundless approach also leads to a dubious relationship with her wealthy husband, Milton Rockwell, played by Kevin O’Leary.
Rockwell wants to use Marty to help expand his pen empire into the Japanese market by exploiting the growing popularity of ping-pong. The two represent a WASP New York elite that Marty seeks to exploit on his way up. American audiences know O’Leary not as an actor but as “Mr. Wonderful” from the reality show “Shark Tank,” where he judges business pitches. His casting here is inspired, as he regards the ambitious Jewish ping-pong player with a mix of disdain and thinly veiled antisemitism.
Despite his evident talent, Marty loses the London final to Japanese star Koto Endo, portrayed by deaf national ping-pong champion Koto Kawaguchi. To make a living, Marty performs ping-pong trick exhibitions during halftime shows of Harlem Globetrotters games around the world. He later returns to New York, consumed by his quest to secure funding for a world tournament in Japan, where he hopes to restore his standing.
The feverish spiral includes attempts to solicit support from unsympathetic family members — his mother Rebecca is played by Fran Drescher — ping-pong hustles with his African American friend Wally, portrayed by musician Tyler Okonma, known as Tyler, the Creator, entanglement with the pregnant Rachel and her violent husband Ira, played by Emory Cohen, a complex relationship with the Stones and a menacing gangster named Ezra Mishkin, portrayed by director Abel Ferrara, who has a deep affection for his dog. It is a dynamic vortex in which events rapidly veer in unexpected directions.
In its rawness, energy and sheer talent, “Marty Supreme” recalls — and pushes further — Sean Baker’s “Anora” (2024). Its similarity to a film that won multiple Oscars last year may hurt “Marty Supreme’s” chances at the 2026 ceremony. Either way, awards or not, it is an outstanding film.
First published: 05:13, 01.01.26