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It seems like it’s been a long time since we’ve seen a film in which the real-life encounter between the protagonist and the actor is so intertextual.
In December 2025, the movie "Marty Supreme" will be released in North America. The film, which tells the story of the gambler-like life of Marty Mauser, an American table tennis player who relied on his talent and arrogance in the early 1950s, has received widespread praise and has a Rotten Tomatoes fresh rating of 97%. Timothée Chalamet, who plays Marty, received unanimous recognition for his performance.
In January 2026, the North American box office of "Marty Supreme" broke the previous record of "The Universe" (2022), also produced by the American independent film company A24. In early February, the film's global box office exceeded US$147 million, and subsequently became A24's highest box office with a global box office of US$180 million. Starring Timothy won the 83rd Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Musical/Comedy and the 31st American Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actor. "Marty" also swept a total of 9 Oscar nominations this year from technical to acting categories. He is also regarded as the most powerful contender for Best Actor at this Oscar.
At the end of February, Timothy, who seemed to be dazzled by the victory, said casually on a talk show that "opera and ballet are arts that no one cares about" and he did not want to engage in such work. Realizing that the trouble came from his mouth, he immediately tried to make amends, but to no avail. He was criticized on a large scale, and world-renowned theaters such as the Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Ballet, and the Los Angeles Opera, as well as a large number of ballet and opera singers, publicly criticized and boycotted him. Some theaters also mockingly use "Timothy" as a promotional code, which you can enter to get a discount when purchasing tickets.
In March, at the 98th Academy Awards, Timothy missed out on the Best Actor award. "Marty Extreme" scored "0 out of 9 nominations". As the film's producer and starring actor, he couldn't hide his disappointment. The Oscar's failure may have indirectly caused the film's box office failure in the mainland market. Despite Timothy's vigorous promotion in China, the film's box office in its first week was less than 3 million yuan, and the cumulative box office forecast as of press time was less than 4 million yuan.
Timothy's frivolous personality and experience of having tasted some sweetness with his talent, but was beaten by fame and fortune, are exactly the same as the Marty he played.
Marty is a dazed young man in a Jewish immigrant community, struggling all day long on the Lower East Side. He resists the worldly stability of being a shoe store manager planned by his uncle, and wants to use his table tennis talent to achieve a kind of success that will go down in history and be noticed by the world, where there will be champagne, luxury suites, and front-page headlines – this is exactly the kind of Upper East Side image that director Woody Allen created for Timothy in "A Rainy Day in New York."
With an outstanding performance, Timothy bid farewell to his previous literary and artistic image of "Sweet Tea" (this is the nickname given to him by Chinese audiences based on the pronunciation of his name and image and temperament), and found Josh Safdie, who has a very authorial image and style, as the director, and used table tennis player Marty Reisman. Reisman)’s experience and character’s spirit, and with a sleek and powerful new screen image, he customized this ambitious performance award-winning “Oscarbait” for himself.
Marty's thunderous speech in the film is no less controversial than Timothy's real-life remarks. Before the semifinals, he told reporters, "I am the ultimate product of Hitler's defeat." He also said before the finals against Japanese player Endo, "Tomorrow I will drop the third atomic bomb on their heads." But I don’t know if he was “guilty for his words.” Regardless of the so-called Academy Award wins, the judges of the Film Association wanted to use the result of no Oscars to teach him and this film a lesson.
This is exactly what the capitalist, pen and ink king Milton Rockwell does to Marty in the film.
After Marty lost to the Japanese player Endo in the London International Table Tennis Competition in 1952, Rockwell wanted to use match-fixing to hold a challenge match before the next international championship held in Japan, and arranged for Marty to lose to Endo again. It is intended to promote products in the Japanese market through the strategy of manipulating national emotions. Marty fiercely refused and attacked Rockwell's son who died in the Pacific War. "I find it funny that you want to please the Japanese so desperately and they kill your son." However, a series of chaotic events in the later period caused Marty to be unable to raise travel expenses to the World Championships in Japan, so he had no choice but to turn back. Finally, Rockwell asked Marty to take off his pants in front of everyone and hit him on the butt with a bat to humiliate and teach him a lesson, claiming that he was angry with his dead son.
Through the above carefully designed dangerous lines and character settings, "Supreme Marty" not only brilliantly demonstrates the subtle psychology and entanglements behind different positions, identities and ethnic groups after the end of World War II, but also vividly brings us back to the gap of an era and the life atmosphere where politics follows us like a ghost. Behind every action and choice, there is politics and position.
In 1952, the "San Francisco Compact" officially came into effect, and the occupation led by the U.S. Allied Forces ended. Japan regained its sovereignty and could re-participate in international affairs including sports events, so Endo appeared in international events in 1952. For Endo, a table tennis player from defeated Japan, and Japanese nationals, the court is a battlefield. After Endo defeated American player Marty, he was regarded as a national hero. The film shows this through a newsreel showing Endo being embraced after returning home from victory.
Entrepreneur Rockwell wanted to use Marty's failure to please the Japanese market. In his eyes, fascism targeted the Jews, but in the Pacific War, "my son died to liberate you." The Japanese and the Jews were respectively the direct and indirect causes of his son's death. Rockwell confuses the murder of Jews in the early days of fascism with the later Japanese-American War. This successful capitalist used the death of his son to package himself as a victim and a failed father. But in business, he was able to temporarily or selectively forget that his son died in the war with Japan, which shows the logic of capital that business overrides everything.
Marty, who lives in a Jewish community in the United States, has no "hatred of country and family" for the game like Endo. What he wants to achieve is the success of Vanity Fair, which is ancillary to winning the championship. He does not represent a group, only himself. In his own words, "I live in a community where it's every man for himself." Another Jewish table tennis player in the film, former world champion Kretzky, after Rockwell discovered the concentration camp number tattoo on his arm, told the story of how he narrowly escaped death in a concentration camp with his skills and how he covered his body with honey in the wild and returned to the concentration camp to be licked by his roommates to supplement nutrition. The contrast between the attitudes and behavior of the two Jewish players leaves nothing to be desired.
Kretzky's memories are presented through real-life photography. Although it may seem awkward, this was an intentional move by Josh Safdie, the film's director and co-writer. The film chose Géza Röhrig, star of the classic Nazi Holocaust film "Son of Saul", to play Kretzky. This time he no longer passively cleaned up the Jewish prisoners who had turned into corpses in the gas chambers, but took the initiative to save them.
Using restless images, tense rhythm, frequent scenes, fast editing and non-routine stories to express the disordered life of a morally flawed protagonist is what the directors Safdie Brothers are good at.
In 2025, the Safdie brothers stopped collaborating as a creative duo for the first time, and coincidentally both chose to shoot sports-character movies (brother Ben Safdie shot UFC legend Mark Cole, starring Dwayne Johnson). "Supreme Marty"'s grasp of the times and presentation of complex characters allowed the director to achieve new breakthroughs and meanings while continuing his personal characteristics and advantages. Therefore, "Supreme Marty" can surpass all his previous works and become the best of Josh Safdie's current career.
The films of the Safdie brothers have a distinct authorial attribute, and the core driving force of the characters in their lenses is a gambler's mentality. The protagonist who is full of complexity will always rationalize his gambling behavior in his actions, because what lies behind it is often the only glimmer of hope left after he has spent everything.
At the same time, in the gambling and struggle of life, the current situation of social life, which is mostly from the bottom, is also presented. In "Heaven Knows What," it's a drug-addicted girl's choice and wandering among dating partners. In "Good Time," it's a brother's desperate attempt to help his cognitively impaired brother escape from prison. In "Uncut," Gems) is about a drug-addicted diamond dealer who uses an opal that NBA players regard as having spiritual power to make a comeback in the casino. In "Marty Supreme", it is about the table tennis player who wants to win his future in a life that goes against his wishes.
Unlike the director's previous series of backfired O. Henry-esque endings, Josh Safdie has Marty win the game at the end, but his approach is still poignant. In order to make a comeback in the Japanese World Championships, Marty had to attend the exhibition match designed by Rockwell and lost to Endo again as agreed. When he learned on the spot that he had been disqualified from this year's tournament and was humiliatingly assigned to kiss a pig, he chose to reveal the truth about match-fixing on stage and challenge again. After experiencing the shock of the first failure and the humiliation of the second failure, this time he fought for himself.
The film arranges a wonderful paradox here. Victory will bring nothing to Marty. Rockwell warned that if he did this, not only would he not get paid, but he would not even be able to return to the United States on the plane he came from because he was penniless. So in this game, Marty no longer fights for the fame and fortune attached to success, but only fights for success itself. This kind of design also gives the characters a color of existential philosophy, making them more profound and vivid.
Marty, who returned to the United States on a US military withdrawal plane, saw his newborn child. He was filled with tears after refusing to acknowledge the child before. Will he embark on a new and stable life path this time? Is this path actually good or bad?
Marty achieved nothing but success after failure in previous competitions and life. "Marty" failed to win an Oscar after winning awards with a bright future. Between the two intertextualities, we cannot measure the excellence and success of a film solely by the Oscar, because treating the Oscar as the ultimate victory is as ironic as the stories Safdie wants to tell us in his film.
