The 2025 dramedy Marty Supreme is about so much more than just ping-pong, or some chase for a dog. It is about Marty Reisman, Josh Safdie, and the massive surge of American pride as well as the American dream that took the U.S. by storm at the end of World War II.
Before we look into Marty Supreme we have to first look at the catalyst of the movie. Josh Safdie, the director and co-writer of Marty Supreme, had just finished Uncut Gems, and was asked what he would do at the end of the project: “When I finished [Uncut Gems], someone asked me, ‘Hey, what’s next?’ and I started to cry because I never thought about that. There was this hollow feeling I had that dreams really are for the lonely.” he said at the Sag Harbor Cinema Q&A.
He had received the book The Money Player: The Confessions of America’s Greatest Table Tennis Champion and Hustler by Marty Reisman quickly after this interaction. He noticed parallels between Marty Reisman and himself, which sparked the creation of Marty Mauser, the main character of this movie who is loosely based off of Marty Reisman, but as we can see, off of Josh Safdie as well.
Marty Supreme takes place at the end of WWII when the American Dream was really popularized. With 17 million new jobs on the market, industrial businesses doing better than ever, corporate profits doubling, and the end of the war, Americans felt as if anything was possible and that they could obtain their dreams. Everyone seemed to believe they could become whatever they wanted to be. This was really instilled in Marty and even inspired the creation of the name “Marty Supreme”: he believes he is becoming the best version of himself, the supreme version of Marty.
The atmosphere of the film heavily reflects 1950s New York. Josh Safdie desperately wanted the movie to be authentic; he made sure the sound design included this authenticity with actors talking over each other, even giving microphones to the extras. He wanted to show the bustling soundscape of midcentury New York.
However, a lot of the music didn’t come from the 1950s.
“A lot of the music is from the 80’s. I realized there was something about the dream that Marty’s having about a future for himself that although isn’t exactly realized the way he wants it, is sort of fulfilled by just imagining something new and imagining something that is yet to be. And there’s a metaphor in the score, it’s him versus the old world and it’s him against a lot of people that want to kind of hold him down or keep him in his lane,” said Daniel Lopatin, the composer and producer of the score for the movie, at the Oscars: Academy Conversations. Having the music be from 30 years in the future represents how Marty’s dreams are a focal point in the movie and what we see him working towards a majority of the time. There are people in the movie, like his family, businessmen, and other table tennis players, that want to hold him down and keep him in reality, but we see that Marty doesn’t like to live in the present. He likes to live his life thinking that everything he wants in the future, he is going to get. The music perfectly portrays that–it’s like he’s already arrived at where he wants to be.
It wasn’t just the sound design that was authentic. The casting of the characters was very intentional as well.
Safdie first met Timothée Chalamet, who played Marty Supreme, at the premiere of Call Me By Your Name. He took note of how much ambition and energy he held in himself, which we see as prominent characteristics of Marty Supreme.
Kevin O’Leary, who isn’t known for acting, was chosen to be Milton Rockwell, a wealthy business man, because of his behavior on the show Shark Tank. He is what stands in front of Marty and his dreams, which he tends to do as a host in Shark Tank. The cold hearted man he is on the show was just what Safdie needed for Rockwell; he even told O’Leary to just be himself in his scenes.
Gwyneth Paltrow was cast as Kay Stone, a famous actress married to Rockwell, because she, too, has a history in film, and just like Kay Stone, hasn’t had a major role in quite some time.
Kay represents the trophy wife of the American dreamer which is why Marty is so besotted by her. She is the American success he is working towards and believes he will achieve. With Kay already having all the fame and money that Marty wants to have, he is immediately attracted to her. He goes out of his way to find her and see her wherever she may be, and that tells us just how far he will go for his dreams. In one scene, he purposefully angers Rockwell just so that he can get a longer glance at Kay. We never see him truly pull away from Kay, until the end, where, I choose to believe that when he sees his baby for the first time, he accepts his reality and lets Kay (and the American dream) go.
Rachel, played by Odessa A’zion, represents humility and sacrifice. Just like A’zion, she is full of energy and is unpredictable. She, unlike Marty, would do anything for those she loves. Rachel sees the best in people, the best in Marty, despite him only acting on his selfish temptations. She believes he is truly special because of his purity, although he is anything but pure (for example, the way he goes around his business partner’s back to get with his wife). We can see how much she believes this when she won’t let Marty go, which is shown when she goes as far to stage domestic violence just for him to stay with her for a few days.
Marty has a free-living nature about him that inspires Kay to go back into acting. He has this ability to make people let go of their personal problems, even just for a bit, and live the way he does: for himself and in the moment. He inspires people to go after what they truly want.
Marty has always lived this way: for himself and unapologetically. The decisions he makes in the film are usually at the cost of others, whether that be a bullet to the mother of his child or almost getting himself and his friend killed. He makes decisions with the focus of benefitting himself in the end.
When Marty went to Japan with Rockwell to partake in a rigged table tennis match to cater to Rockwell’s business audience, which at the time were the Japanese, he realized that this was not what he was working toward this entire time. He didn’t just want the money for it, he wanted to prove to himself and others that he was skilled despite his upbringing. He wasn’t just an ordinary joe. This is why he declared a rematch against Koto Kawaguchi, a Japanese table tennis player who he had formally lost to previously, to prove to himself that all his work wasn’t wasted because it wasn’t about the final product that Marty cared for (like Josh Safdie with the completion of Uncut Gems), but the process and the fun he had along the way. Even though a lot of it was stressful, with being on the brink of debt most of the time or having to find a lost dog for a mafia boss type, he was still living on his own accord and was much happier than he would have been selling shoes for a living back in New York. The conclusion of the movie was a direct reflection of how Safdie felt during the completion of Uncut Gems. He cared about the process along the way and keeping true to himself.
Josh Safdie has said that after he finished Uncut Gems, he got married and had children. This quote from Safdie is what really inspired the ending of the movie and tied everything together. “When I looked into [my firstborn’s] eyes, I got lost in the infinite timeloop. I just saw the everlasting future and there was something incredibly humbling about it…I really needed the baby to stop crying, in a moment where it locks in and Marty sees the infinity, he sees the everlasting of time.”
This is what they were getting at with the opening scene of the egg being fertilized and the ending scene of the birth of the baby. Time is infinite. The egg turning into a ping pong ball represented everything that was in between. The ending tells us that everything is so much bigger than ourselves, something Marty, in my opinion, didn’t really grasp throughout the movie, but finally understood in the end.
So, Marty Supreme isn’t just a sports movie about ping-pong or Marty Reisman, it is about the human experience and the American dream that so many people invested their lives in. Life is so much bigger than us because time is infinite. We are all working towards our own dreams with the background music of the future and the hustling and bustling of others doing the same. I believe we have all felt like Marty before and while people won’t go as extreme as Marty does when achieving his dreams, we all work towards a goal at the end of the day. We all hold desires, that’s what makes us human and what makes this movie such a great depiction of the human experience.
