Timothée Chalamet is waltzing into the Big Two-Six doing more of what worked in “A Complete Unknown,” playing a lovable jerk. Indulging naturalistically in biographic-ish “Marty Supreme,” his latest midcentury New Yorker is a young man’s ridiculously selfish dream of being the best, a chronic liar, homicidal, and abusive Marty Mauser—the embellished 1950s table-tennis champion, Marty Reisman.
Marty, what does he do, you may ask? Table tennis? Some. But also armed robbery, dousing a half dozen men in gasoline while electrically setting them and a gas station ablaze, and two dirty affairs. (Gwyneth Paltrow, anyone?)
Come for explosions, director Safdie delivers. Yet the cornerstone of the film’s enjoyability, Chalamet’s acting, shines as remarkable as it is humble. One self-aware scene even highlights this, where he, as Mauser, offers acting advice to a pretentious Broadway aspirational.
Chalamet picked up the guitar and mounted the harmonica for Complete Unknown in the same way he articulates the ping-pong paddle for Marty Supreme. Chalamet and his ensemble’s supportive table-tennis abilities are acrobatic and well-rehearsed in the same form as “Karate Kid” or “Ted Lasso.” Sports are, after all, designed for the viewer, and offer a nice break from the film’s endless chaos.
Details notwithstanding, this picture is rated R for all reasons imaginable, except maybe substance abuse. Buckle up for everything from racial slurs to Holocaust flashbacks, to—as your Instagram Reels may have shown—a title sequence depicting the exact microscopic science of mammalian reproduction set to angelic chamber choir.
“Marty Supreme” is an adult film, for neither the faint of heart nor the easily-offended. You have been warned.
But there is something about either the grossness presented to us, or maybe the way Chalamet delivers it, which delights. I am not suggesting being offended is a bad trait, but close-mindedness will not make it a fun watch. Those of us already desensitized to the internet’s dirty recesses will have no problem with the nihilistic yet sociologically aware plot points and dialogue of “Marty Supreme” in its poultry 149-minute runtime.
For example, one set of lines stand out in its disgusting, albeit striking delivery by Chalamet. In reference to a Holocaust survivor table tennis competitor Mauser seeks to defeat, he exclaims “I’m going to do to Kletzki what Auschwitz couldn’t: I’m going to finish the job!”
Such a line is a true shock—and an excellent exposé of how Marty Mauser’s character is a disgusting, off putting antisocial opportunist, and reflects the hectic and stomach- twisting energy of the film in its two-and-a-half hour entirety. Appropriately, its loose handling of a serious mechanism of atrocity received some staunch criticism—a great example being Jana Reiss’s review for the Salt Lake Tribune. But it also has a follow up. Unflinching yet simultaneously apologetic. Mauser reaffirms, “It’s okay… I can say that, I’m Jewish.”
Holocaust jokes are, fittingly, strictly off-limits for the vast majority of the American mainstream and its media. But for Gen Z? Already so largely desensitized? We are more likely to see a cocky postwar America played by a cocky Marty Mauser. Nihilism sways.
Hopefully many of us, including myself, formed a knot in our chests and let out a few gasps—as did I in numerous other points in the film’s violent and vulgar runtime. Yet all viewers must also reckon this film was set in 1952. World War Two was barely seven years ago. Timeline-wise, that’s not much different than making a joke about Covid-19, a kind of dark humor our generation employs as a hard to explain coping mechanism for genuine trauma. In this way, “Marty Supreme” speaks to us.
The offensiveness of the film can be typified here, in the sense that it is all put into context. Kletzke, the butt of the former jab, approaches the character’s cast and regales us with his Holocaust backstory. Sneaking honey, coated on his body beneath his camp uniform, and allowing his bunkmates to lick it off of him as a form of much-needed sustenance for those enduring genocide.
This scene is by no means integral to the plot, and does not spoil the ending, but shows us what “Marty Supreme” excels in. It, like Kletzke’s gesture, is simultaneously so gross yet so wonderfully humane, it makes it so hard to look away from.
Whether or not this film is the “masterpiece” some (Variety, Rotten Tomatoes, the Hollywood Reporter to name a few) laud is truly up to the viewer. Disgusting is the easy description of Marty Supreme. But of Timothée Chalamet’s delivery, alongside an ensemble cast, crafting an epic saga which does nothing less than satisfy a young viewer’s appetite for all things they do not wish to endure in real life? For my digitally desensitized generation, disgustingly good is the better description.
https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2026/01/02/why-religion-columnist-jana-riess/
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