In “Brave Sperm and Demure Eggs: Fallopian Gender Politics on YouTube,” academic Pamela Nettleton explores the implications of media depicting sperm as subject and egg as object, framing it as a perpetuation of problematic notions of patriarchal power. As I watched a prolonged macro two-shot of Timothée Chalamet’s sperm and Odessa A’zion’s egg inching toward insemination on a 40-foot screen, it all seemed to make sense. But what on earth did this have to do with table tennis?
I soon got an answer: a match cut snapped me from a close-up of an egg to a table tennis ball spinning down the court, its white blur carving the air. The introduction is jarring, hilarious, and unmistakably intentional, a visual sleight of hand that announces the film’s obsession with momentum and surprise above all else. Marty Supreme is always in motion.
To say that Marty Supreme is a film about table tennis would not be entirely incorrect. It would be akin to saying something like “La La Land is about jazz” or “Inception is about dreams.” The film—flirting with ideas ranging from power to subjugation, capitalism to expansionism, greatness to desire—is far from a straightforward sports picture. Marty Supreme merely uses table tennis as a narrative device, a paddle used by Director Josh Safdie to keep the ball in the air.
Set in the early 1950s, Marty Supreme unfolds across New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, and Cairo. Despite its international sprawl, the film has a stunning visual consistency, thanks to legendary cinematographer Darius Khondji, known for his work with David Fincher and Bong Joon-ho, as well as the Safdie brothers. Khondji paired Arriflex cameras shooting 35mm film with vintage anamorphic lenses, engrossing the audience through the timeless richness of each frame.
This cinematographic accomplishment, however, is only half of the mise-en-scène executed to pure perfection. Costume Designer Miyako Bellizzi and Production Designer Jack Fisk craft a world of wide lapels and towering skyscrapers, flawlessly immersing the viewer in a world undergoing post–World War II reconstruction and the economic expansion that followed.
Grounded in this backdrop, Marty Supreme is a gritty, time-tested tale about chasing dreams. Marty Mauser, the film’s titular protagonist played by Chalamet, is the most driven person you know who is also the worst person you know. In every scene, one yearns to reach into the screen and punch Marty in the face yet cannot help but cheer for him with the same closed fist.
Chalamet embodies the insufferable table tennis talent whose life mission is to win the world’s first title for America, hurting himself and everyone around him along the way to get there. The brilliance of Chalamet’s performance captures both the post–WWII cockiness of the United States and the frantic, scrappy, underdog nature of a protagonist chasing his dreams.
This tension is equal parts performance and wit, with Safdie and Ronald Bronstein putting on a masterclass in screenwriting. Chekov’s gun proves insufficient; Safdie and Bronstein instead opt for a whole armory. Despite the twisting tangents the protagonist finds himself on, every thread of the story is somehow woven together, resulting in a cinematic fabric consisting of diabolical digressions that makes you forget entirely that Marty Supreme is technically a sports movie.
Marty spends the most memorable moments of the picture on such side quests. Often, Marty is accompanied by Wally (Tyler Okonma, usually known as Tyler, the Creator, in a scene-stealing feature debut), an accomplice whose loyalty oscillates between genuine friendship and the sheer persuasive power of inertia, who finds himself trapped on the roller coaster ride that is being the protagonist’s partner in crime. Marty hustles for cash. He burns racists. He crosses the mob. He cons women. He gets conned himself. Every object, line, and glance is loaded. Every gun fires.
The film is a properly chaotic, beautifully deranged picture from Safdie. At a perpetually breakneck pace, each scene is like a ping-pong paddle that bludgeons the audience into submission, inciting laughs, squirms, tears, and everything in between.
