Timothée Chalamet isn’t merely an impressively nuanced actor; he’s also an astonishing chameleon.
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| Marty (Timothée Chalamet, far right) and longtime friend and fellow hustler Wally (Tyler Okonma, far left) size up the potential victims in a neighborhood bowling alley with table tennis options. |
Events begin in 1952, in Lower East Side New York, where 23-year-old Marty Mauser (Chalamet) works as a clerk in a shoe store owned by his Uncle Murray (music journalist Larry “Ratso” Sloman). Marty excels at his work — as he tastelessly boasts, he could “sell shoes to amputees” — but it’s a job he didn’t choose, and a drudge-laden life that feels stifling and pre-ordained.
We’ve scarcely taken in his character, when he has a back-room quickie with a “customer” — Rachel (Odessa A’zion) — who turns out to be a longtime friend and neighbor. The title credits then unspool as his sperm swim up her reproductive tract, and implant themselves into an egg.
(Hey, I said Safdie’s approach was outrageous.)
Table tennis has become Marty’s escape from a work-a-day world that expects him to stay in his lane. He excels at his sport; he’s ruthless, powerful and blessed with a hustler’s ability to gauge an opponent’s strengths and weaknesses. He speaks constantly of attending and conquering the upcoming world championships in Wembley … but lacks the funds to get there.
Trouble is, table tennis isn’t taken seriously in the States in the 1950s. That opinion certainly isn’t shared by those who play each other for cash in a nearby table tennis parlor, where Marty and longtime friend and fellow hustler Wally (Tyler Okonma) frequently fleece unsuspecting marks.
Marty is a force of nature. He doesn’t walk; he struts. He doesn’t chat; he dominates every conversation. Statements, proclamations and determined assertions spew from his mouth in a torrent. He believes not only that he’s the best at this sport, but that the world owes him a similar faith in this claim.
Less charitably, Marty is arrogant, boorish, rude and quick to take advantage of anybody — or anything — to get what he wants.
Not a nice or likable guy.
Do we admire him? Good question.
Marty makes it to Wembley, by means more foul than fair, and quickly sizes up the man who will become his bête noire: stoic Japanese champion Koto Endo (real-world table tennis champ Koto Kawaguchi). Endo’s mastery of the sport comes from singular focus: He was deafened during the 1945 bombing raid of Tokyo, and has channeled this disability into unwavering concentration.
Marty also chances to spot former Hollywood starlet Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow), who traded her career for the comfort of marriage to wealthy industrialist Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary). As if the ongoing championship matches weren’t enough to occupy his thoughts, Marty makes a relentless play for Kay. She initially finds him annoying, then amusing.
More to the point — and we see this shift in Paltrow’s gaze — Marty’s unwavering belief in his talent, and where it will take him, re-ignites her own former acting goals. He senses this, and encourages it; she laps it up.
In a display of eye-rolling chutzpah, Marty also brazenly proposes that her husband become a financial backer. Marty’s dealings with this true shark eventually will have grave consequences.
The Wembley match sequences are intense, and laden with all the suspense of any fiercely fought sports competition. Cinematographer Darius Khondji and co-editors Safdie and Ronald Bronstein make these sequences breathtaking.
(Lest you wonder, Chalamet traveled for years with a table in tow, and practiced in between takes while making his last several films. He does indeed do much of his own playing.)
Ultimately, things do not go as Marty hoped. He subsequently partners with fellow Wembley competitor Béla Kletski (Géza Röhrig), also a capable “trick player,” and the two of them tour the world as an opening act for the Harlem Globetrotters.
Once back in New York, co-scripter Safdie and Ronald Bronstein take Marty’s unfolding saga into a Cloud Cuckoo Land inhabited by mobsters, fleabag hotels with flimsy floors, an exploding gas station, a runaway dog, and a nasty, hard-scrabble farmer (well played, in a bit of stunt casting, by magician Penn Jillette).
Honestly, this entire second act is burlesque nonsense, merely killing time as we wonder whether Marty will make it to Tokyo, for the following year’s world table tennis championship.
Chalamet may dominate this film, but his co-stars certainly aren’t chump change. Paltrow brings subtle nuance to the troubled Kay; A’zion is a firecracker as Rachel, trapped between her hopeless affection for Marty, and the lout to whom she’s married (Emory Cohen’s Ira, straight out of Tennessee Williams). Okonma also shines, as the foolishly loyal Wally, repeatedly drawn into Marty’s ludicrous schemes.
Despite Safdie’s tendency toward the outrageous — a trait he shares with his main character — much of this story is (very loosely) adapted from real-world figures. Marty’s character is inspired by Marty Reisman, the reigning American table-tennis player during the 1940s and ’50s. He was just as impish and self-assured, but (apparently) nowhere near as cruel as this film’s Marty.
Endo is based on Japanese champion Hiroji Satoh, who defeated Reisman during the 1952 World Championships. Even Kletzki has actual roots, as a fictionalized version of Polish table tennis champ Alojzy “Alex” Ehrlich (whose background I’ll not share here, as it’s a major dramatic plot point regarding Kletzki).
Although Safdie builds his film to the obvious, anticipated climax, we’re left — as we approach the final moments — with the same question that was troubling about Anora. Does such a character deserve a happy ending? And can a film this unapologetically Out There get away with a Hollywood conclusion?
You’ll just have to watch it, to find out. Whatever else your reaction, I promise you won’t be bored…
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