“B
ut the truth is, I’m really in the pursuit of greatness. I know people don’t really talk like that, but I want to be one of the greats.”
When Timothée Chalamet delivered these words in his 2025 Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG) speech, some may have seen it as bold, maybe even arrogant. After watching “Marty Supreme,” it feels earned.
Premiering on Thursday, Dec. 25, American filmmaker Josh Safdie’s “Marty Supreme” is loosely based on the real life of 1940s and 1950s table tennis star Marty Reisman. The film focuses on the life of Reisman as he navigates New York City’s underground table tennis scene and pursues the world championship title, but more importantly, validation. What begins as an ambition quickly transforms into an obsession — and at the center of it all is a performance that refuses to play it safe.
Timothée Chalamet: a performance of greatness
I’ve always been a fan of Chalamet’s work. From “Beautiful Boy” to “Dune” to “Wonka,” his performances consistently balance vulnerability and control. But “Marty Supreme” felt different. The performance felt obsessive and all-consuming, much like the character himself.
Chalamet’s portrayal of Marty feels earned because it is. According to People, he secretly practiced table tennis whenever and wherever he could while filming other projects.
“Everything I was working on, it was this secret: I had a table in London while I was making “Wonka.” On “Dune 2,” I had a table in Budapest, Jordan. I had a table in Abu Dhabi. I had a table at the Cannes Film Festival for “The French Dispatch,” Chalamet said.
Marty moves like someone who cannot afford to lose, and Chalamet makes that desperation impossible to ignore. Every rally feels personal, every mistake catastrophic.
What makes this performance so convincing is Chalamet’s refusal to soften Marty. He never asks the audience for forgiveness. Marty is selfish, manipulative, and ruthless, yet Chalamet plays him with enough vulnerability that the audience understands his self-destructive pursuit of greatness without excusing it. That balance of empathy without redemption is incredibly hard to pull off, yet Chalamet does it effortlessly.
This role feels like a culmination of everything Chalamet has been building toward. “Marty Supreme” is proof of his range, but also his fearlessness. If greatness means taking risks that expose something ugly and human, this performance earns its place in that conversation.
The film itself: ambition, morality, and resilience
What makes “Marty Supreme” truly great, though, is not the sport. It’s what the sport represents. From the moment the Marty Supreme ping pong ball labeled “Made in America” appears, the film frames the ball as a symbol of the American Dream. For Marty, survival means winning, no matter who gets hurt along the way.
The movie itself moves like a ping pong ball. Wins, losses, lies, deals, betrayals ricochet back and forth faster and faster, leaving no time to breathe or feel, only time to chase. The pacing is relentless, mirroring Marty’s obsessive mind. The audience is swept along with him, unable to step out of the frenzy, which is exactly the point. Safdie isn’t just telling us about ambition, he’s making us experience the exhaustion, tension, and moral dilemmas of a life defined by competition and obsession.
This is why the honey scene and the Holocaust imagery are not gratuitous; they are necessary. The discomfort is intentional. Safdie forces the audience to sit with the reality of human resilience in its most extreme forms. Marty survives by jumping through hoops, screwing people over, and prioritizing himself at all costs. His friend, Wally, survives through a different approach. He preserves humanity through selflessness and care, even when the world offers no reward for it. The contrast challenges the audience to confront what resilience and survival must often look like. Can success achieved through cruelty truly be considered a victory?
Marty lies, cheats, manipulates, and begs. In the second exhibition match against Endo, he cheats his way to victory. He wins the game, but loses everything else. His reputation is ruined, and his dream is effectively dead. The American Dream doesn’t collapse because he fails, but because he succeeds the wrong way.
The film’s final moments are devastating. As “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears plays, Marty breaks down when watching his child, the same child he denied until he felt worthy of being a father. The soundtrack’s earlier choice, “Force of Life,” feels painfully ironic.
Every action Marty took led him here. He is alive, but at a cost he can never undo.
Final judgement
Marty is not a good person. He’s narcissistic, egotistical, and a pathological liar. Yet, I found myself rooting for him. Not because he deserves it, but because Marty represents something uncomfortable and deeply human. He embodies the small voice inside all of us that wants to matter, to win, to prove that our lives mean more than insignificance. “Marty Supreme” asks what happens when that voice is never challenged, and Chalamet’s fearless performance ensures we feel it viscerally.
“Everybody wants to rule the world.”
“Marty Supreme” shows us what happens when someone actually tries.
