🏓 Marty Supreme 🏓

Timothée Chalamet's got it.

Pour a pint of that dirty
Timmy Tim ‘bout thirty (Phew)
Still sippin’ dirty (Lean, lean)
Still puttin’ work in (Let’s go)
Got your girl Birkin (Schwep)
Even though I’m jerkin’, jerkin’, I’m jerkin’
It’s Himothée Chalamet chillin’
Tryna stack a hundred million, girl got a billion
What the fuck? What a wonderful feelin’
—Timothée Chalamet

Timothée Chalamet will turn 30 on December 27th. And coming from someone who just turned 30 after a reliably chaotic 20s that featured graduating from college, good ol’ fashioned heartbreak, a lot of running, grad school, a global pandemic, moving on from old friends, many attempts to make new friends, diving into therapy, moving to a new city, more running, trying to make something of myself, so many first dates, not as many second dates, an AMC A-List subscription, an overwhelming media landscape, a bunch of free SoulCycle classes (until they got rid of a loophole I discovered) and probably too much Phoebe Bridgers music, let me just say … welcome.

I can’t say I feel much different now than how I did hours before I hit my third decade, but I do feel confident that the best is yet to come. It’s a fool’s errand predicting the future, and still, things can’t get much more chaotic than your 20s.

Marty Supreme, a new Josh Safdie film featuring Timothée Chalamet in a madcap performance as a quintessential striving asshole, is a lot of things. And yet if you take all of the ping-pong and bedlam away, it’s a fable of sorts about seeking greatness in your young adulthood and finding it where you least expect it. It’s pretty easily one of the best movies of the year and the latest (and greatest) sign that Chalamet is the movie star of our times.

The lasting image of this movie (at least on first watch) for me is Chalamet booking it down the streets of New York, shirt flapping in the wind, with his gut leading the way. It’s a tidy summation of the 150-minute Bildungsroman and a relatable feeling for your formative years as we’re all sprinting for (or from) something without really knowing where we’re going.

Perhaps I’m looking at this all too spiritually, but I think that’s what Safdie and Chalamet are going for: This is the story of an American who thinks he’s destined for big things without any understanding about what he actually wants or why—perhaps best exemplified by the fact that this is a movie ostensibly set in the 1950s that has an anachronistic soundtrack filled with 1980s pop hits.

Chalamet’s Marty Mauser is out of his time and could just as easily be in 2026 running around to a score from the 1930s. The point is that this person exists in every era, no matter the game (in this case, it’s ping-pong), and that we all need a bit of mess before things (hopefully) settle down.

Now, that’s nice and all, but it’s one thing to want to make a movie for the times and another thing to make it. From its introductory sequence that sets the stage for what’s to come to its opening credits that (let’s just say) demonstrate a survival of the fittest mentality, Marty Supreme captures a period of one’s life that is both captivating and something no one ever wants to think about again once it’s over.

I found myself bewildered in the best of ways with where Chalamet’s able to go and the odyssey of sorts that his protagonist finds himself on. There’s one throughline (to get to the top of the ping-pong world), but it’s also layered with various side quests, from figuring out a “romantic” life with Odessa A’zion and Gwyneth Paltrow(?) to trying to make a bit of money to searching for a place to lay one’s head.

Despite being in Chalamet’s corner post Dune, Little Women, Lady Bird, A Complete Unknown and Bones and All, I didn’t think he had this charismatic unlikability to him. It’s a Patrick Bateman-esque ache and pain mixed with Frank Abagnale Jr.’s charm and can-do attitude, and it’s so goddamn cool that Chalamet’s able to channel all of that despite his obvious popularity and star power. It’d be very easy to settle and make family-friendly hits, but that doesn’t seem to be all that he wants. As evidenced by his press tour for the ages, which has featured fake Zoom calls, orange blimps, British rapping (see above) and “128 appearances in the next 96 hours.”

There’s a lot more to say about where the story goes and the overload of remarkable supporting characters on the edge of the frame, but for now, I just want to say that you should try to check out Marty Supreme in theaters if you can.

Maybe this is silly, and yet, I found myself inspired by Chalamet and Safdie’s commitment to making something this singular, with obvious allusions to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, The Wolf of Wall Street and The Color of Money. It makes me want to be more creative and try my hand at “achieving greatness.” Which really just goes to show you that your 30s aren’t really much different than your 20s after all.

Nothing ever changes.