Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie, 2025)

[Brian C]

“I don’t want to be compared to that other user, so I’m going to make vague allusions to what other people are saying without any examples to back it up.”

OK!

I re-read your responses in this thread, and the ones that seem most relevant are the ones in response to mfunk and myself. You seem, especially in these responses, to be taking criticism of this film very personally. But he didn’t say what you’re attributing to the others, and I definitely didn’t say it either. So I’m not really sure why we’re even having this conversation except that you’re trying to paint not agreeing with you about the ending as a personal fault of ours.

And I’m sorry but that’s just bad faith, like I said.

[therewillbeblus]

I wasn't even disagreeing with your initial response, sorry if that wasn't clear. I don't understand your response to mine in the context of what I was attempting to articulate, and I tried to clarify, but apparently that dug a deeper hole. I'm not sure why this conversation is happening either. It seems to be rooted in misunderstandings, as you seem to be attributing a grander context to what I'm trying to say. I'll just chalk that up to poor communicate on my part

If I seem to be taking this personally, I apologize. It's no secret that I tend to take a radically humanistic view for films like this, celebrating the dignity and worth of all fictional characters in a state of vulnerability to potentially rehabilitate. I think we fundamentally disagree on what they "deserve" (which is not a "personal fault" of yours or anyone else's) and I'd really like to just leave that at that.

[Never Cursed]

I've already mentioned that I've interpreted some of the backlash as being rooted in personal triggers to Marty's behavior, with some viewers not wanting him, or feeling he doesn't deserve to get that opportunity in the end, frustrated after sitting with a character they despise for two-plus hours

I don’t think this interpretation is like TheTreeSong’s reading of OBAA at all. TWBB is not making nearly as capacious a claim, for one thing. Where TreeSong was using a hypothetical black audience for that film as a sock puppet for their poorly articulated belief that it was bigoted, TWBB is responding to specific readings with his own interpretation of the movie in an attempt to explain them. Not sure how it’s “in bad faith” to reply to negative responses to a movie that asks you to empathize with a selfish person by noting that those viewers were unwilling or unable to do what the movie asked of them.

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For my money, while I agree with TWBB’s reading of the ending, it does confuse me that some viewers of the film have come away with such an inhuman perception of Marty Mauser that they’re unwilling to extend the possibility that he might cry at the occasion of his child’s birth. To me, he was obviously and consciously denying a truth that was evident to him when he first found out about the pregnancy, and the achievement of the final victory broke down his barriers enough to psychologically allow him to outwardly accept a truth he had already internalized. It reminds me very much of similar debates had last year about the ending to a certain red-hot awards player, and how some viewers of that movie were unwilling to extend a bit of rope to it at a moment of surprising emotional change.

Side note: really “happy” to see posters who dislike or question the ending just describe it in detail outside of spoiler tags. It’s just indecorous behavior, and seems to indicate that those who disliked the ending consider it not dramatically valuable or worth being not spoiled for. This same thing happened last year for Sirat with me (not here), and it ruined the second half of that movie.

[Brian C]

I wasn't even disagreeing with your initial response, sorry if that wasn't clear. I don't understand your response to mine in the context of what I was attempting to articulate, and I tried to clarify, but apparently that dug a deeper hole. I'm not sure why this conversation is happening either. It seems to be rooted in misunderstandings, as you seem to be attributing a grander context to what I'm trying to say. I'll just chalk that up to poor communicate on my part

If I seem to be taking this personally, I apologize. It's no secret that I tend to take a radically humanistic view for films like this, celebrating the dignity and worth of all fictional characters in a state of vulnerability to potentially rehabilitate. I think we fundamentally disagree on what they "deserve" (which is not a "personal fault" of yours or anyone else's) and I'd really like to just leave that at that.

Fair enough, I’ll let it go too.

[Mr Sausage]

—EDIT: aaaand of course as I was writing this everyone agrees to drop it and I don’t see it until after I post.

If I may jump in, it seemed to me reading your posts, blus, that you were interpreting mfunk and BrianC et al criticizing the ending because they thought a person like Marty isn’t a good enough or deserving enough person to merit the ending he got. Which prompted generalized arguments from you that people in general deserve a ‘white light’ moment.

But I agree with BrianC: that’s not fair to say. I took their posts to be a reasonable criticism of a movie (not people in general) that it

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hadn’t earned its redemptive ending through the logic of its characters and story, but had thrown it in there and just expected the audience to accept it. And I got the sense that, for some of them, this was tantamount to rewarding the character for his bad behaviour, which they found mildly objectionable. These are reasonable criticisms and don’t require anyone to believe human beings cannot be allowed ‘white light’ moments. You only have to feel this movie isn’t a believable instance of one.

I think where you went wrong is when you stopped engaging them on their feelings towards the film and started engaging with what you supposed to be their attitudes towards humanity. It was a mistake, I think, to make that jump. No one wants to find themselves suddenly having to defend their own characters, so they’ll be defensive, and you don’t really know these people well enough to be making these accusations on so little evidence (however privately you may suspect it).

I mean this in all friendliness. I just don’t think it’s a great avenue for a discussion.

[therewillbeblus]

I feel like Never Cursed said what I was trying to better than I did. Again, apologies if my writing came across a certain way. There's a good reason I don't really write on this forum anymore

[mfunk9786]

Would like to chime in to say that comparing TWBB on any level to TheTreeSong is ridiculous, he’s one of the best writers and users we’ve ever had here, and I can see where his opinion is coming from even if I don’t agree with it.

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Hell, I don’t even think the character doesn’t deserve redemption! I just take issue with the film offering redemption to its audience for enjoying Marty’s bullshit instead of being rightfully disgusted by it. He got two people killed and countless others hurt in exchange for some half-executed, piddling scams. If you’re like “oh wow, how sweet” after that, the movie (in my opinion!) has scammed you just as much as Marty was trying to scam Ferrara.

[Red Screamer]

This is pretty fun, but doesn’t have any of the texture or depth of Uncut Gems. The fist-pounding style is still effective, if largely sanded down, with the overlapping dialogue from the previous film, for example, really only present in the opening moments. I particularly like the way Safdie uses Chalamet’s beauty in close-ups and his small, aggressive physique in longer shots. That being said, the movie seems to be built as a showcase for Chalamet, and his is not a performance anywhere near as interesting or dynamic as Sandler’s. It’s a stock character played to the hilt with little variation. This has less to do with Chalamet and everything to do with the type of movie they put him in.

I’ve only seen the last three Safdie movies. All three focus on hustlers and are in a sense about adrenaline and gambling. Sandler in Gems was an ordinary guy empowered and sent out of control by his death drive (which is presented as silly without diminishing its seriousness), ie he is a gambler who secretly wants nothing more than to lose. As mfunk pointed out, his addiction, his ability to keep it secret, and his desire (stronger in many ways) to keep it under control are linked to both his position in his family and to his job. Chalamet in Marty Supreme is an extraordinary guy — starting the movie with a claim on being the best in the world at his sport — empowered and sent out of control by his selfishness, who openly wants nothing more than to win. The first set-up describes a modern tragicomedy, the second describes most “gritty” sports movies. Sandler curled up on the floor of his daughter’s bedroom watching sports on his phone is more shocking and poignant than any of Chalamet’s craven manipulations, many of which are fairly predictable. This predictability isn’t helped by the “worst case scenario” style of scene development that the script simply won’t let go of; the days of Gems’ intricate builds and crosscutting are long gone.

Ambivalent, complex grace notes like Sandler’s squirrelish inspection of the apartment after Julia Fox has moved all her stuff out or him taking out the trash in a moment of tense reflection have no equivalent here. Part of that is the period setting, which inspires more gloss and less sharp everyday details — details which go a long way in grounding the adrenaline rush in both realistic consequences and comic complications — and another part is the choice, somewhere down the line, to make this nothing more than a willful roller coaster ride.

[Noiretirc]

Edit: Anger then calmness.

This thread is quite a ride!

[wattsup32]

I think my issue with that reading is that

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it doesn’t really answer why he’s there in the first place. Up until getting back from Japan, he hadn’t even acknowledged the baby was his and he had blown off Rachel almost completely.

So you’d have to say that he decided to go back to Rachel, face his family, and claim the child, all for the sake of putting on some fake show for the nurse.

That’s why I’d have to take the ending as more or less at face value. I didn’t really believe it either, I think his “victory” in Japan would have only validated his narcissism instead of satiating it. I think he’d have gone straight to the gym when he got back to train, fueled by the knowledge that he was best in the world again and his breakthrough was truly now imminent and he’d be able to rub it all in Rockwell’s face … all while having freed himself, from his perspective, of the people holding him back.

So in that sense, I’m sympathetic to wanting to have a cynical take on the ending. But I just don’t think it’s written that way.

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I would assess what Marty would get up to after Japan exactly as you have.

And, you are right in that the reading doesn't answer why he's there in the first place. Of course, none of the other readings (even the "take it at face value" reading) do either. It seems to me that, taking it at face value, means he ends up there because he ends up there, exactly how he might in any other reading of the ending. Once there, however, he can't help being anything other than Marty and that means ingrained, reflexive manipulation of anyone near him--be it a nurse who he'll never see again or a baby who lacks the capacity to be manipulated.

TWBB's assertion that people have these moments all the time and do nothing with them is spot on. What I don't see in the film is much indication that Marty is capable of having a moment like this, yet. Even if we take it as his first, there isn't much there to tell us now would be a time he might have his first moment.

And, it's possible that TWBB is right: the film earned that ending and many of us just didn't pick up on the labor it undertook to earn it.

[Matt]

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If you’re like “oh wow, how sweet” after that, the movie (in my opinion!) has scammed you just as much as Marty was trying to scam Ferrara.

That's actually kind of an interesting notion, the movie

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putting one over on the audience with the final scenes.

I personally don't see that as an intention here, but it would be a neat Haneke-esque flourish. I don't think Josh Safdie has that kind of remote, ambivalent relationship with his audience, but "The Curse," which Benny Safdie co-created with Nathan Fielder, certainly felt like a prank on the audience at times.

spoiler for Marty Supreme:

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Maybe this is what others are getting at, but I can see a certain Bresson-style grace in the ending, that "white light" moment TWBB mentioned. Whether we're supposed to accept that at face value or be skeptical of it definitely does seem intentional of Safdie (and Bronstein). Could it be real emotion? Could it just be exhaustion? Could it be manipulation? Or could we just be giving the filmmakers too much credit and it's a bad ending? Would it have felt more true to the character if the film had just ended with his triumph in Japan?

[swo17]

Is that a spoiler for Marty Supreme, The Curse, or both?

[therewillbeblus]

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Would it have felt more true to the character if the film had just ended with his triumph in Japan?

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I think you're getting at the disconnect between what viewers see this type of movie as. It would be more true to the character we've seen to have it end with his triumph in Japan, and I certainly expected that on my first viewing. I didn't see a real 'purpose' in the film, other than watching a wild ride. But then the ending happened and something clicked: that this movie is really about a narcissistic stage of life (exemplified by the most extreme kind of narcissistic personality, which is bound to repel and divide) and the ending marks the potential beginning of some maturity. I agree with others that Marty isn't going to just 'change' completely - he has a personality and that doesn't just go away when you have a child... but there's a possibility of him growing some layers. I dunno, I loved it - the idea that one of the most repellent individuals can emerge from a familiar stage of life (broadly speaking) and become a more complex person. But I also totally get the other side - that from what we've seen the ending feels like a cheap add-on. For me, it elevated the film into something with a purpose and re-contextualized the point of showing Marty's gradual decline into (relative!) humility.

[Matt]

Is that a spoiler for Marty Supreme, The Curse, or both?

Just Marty Supreme.

[Matt]

Side note: really “happy” to see posters who dislike or question the ending just describe it in detail outside of spoiler tags.

Thank you for noting this. Out of an abundance of caution, I've gone through and inserted spoiler tags in posts discussing anything that might be considered spoilers. No other changes were made, and I won't make a habit of this.

[Balthazar]

I liked Good Time and Uncut Gems well enough but this struck me as a superior enthrallment. Sometimes it just takes a moment or two to light up a film, and there were enough fine, distinct touches here, capped off with the

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"I'm a vampire" speech late on, which I took literally and was also pleased to see was intended as such.

Of course Marty is another amoral protagonist in the mode of Connie or Howard Ratner but (at the risk of drawing ire) personally I found him to have more charm. The apple-in-the-bowl moment and his entrance at Kay's rehearsal, for instance. Brattish even then, certainly, yet winsome.

It may be because I've just read William Gaddis's J R, a fantastic, similarly frenetic New York story of accumulation and financialisation, but I liked the undercurrent of a character such as Marty being contrasted with the creep of capital in the 50s. For one thing he's constantly trying to avoid 'selling out'. He always fails on that front, but his hustler character is of a different type to the pre-eminent version today. He's trying for something, not just riches. Fame yes, but fame for achieving something.

Admittedly this isn't exactly contradicting the 'why am being pushed to root for this PoS' criticisms. Still, I'm one of those who thinks Safdie puts in just enough counter-argument.

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The early Auschwitz story is surely meant to be contrasted with Marty's selfishness as well as Rockwell's prejudices. When Marty says to Rachel late on that "I have a purpose; you're just making things up as you go along", the rollercoaster of what's gone before can't help make us think the second half of this sentence also applies chiefly to him. And to return to the vampire comment - while that may be an indictment of O'Leary's character, the assertion that Marty will have a miserable life rang true to me (admittedly I did see that O'Leary claims to have put that line in, thinking Chalamet's character didn't receive enough censure. Which is, well, another one for the 'it takes a village' auteur theory, I guess).

So the ending. Marty feels his pyrrhic victory proves a point and he now, for several reasons, has nowhere to go in table tennis. May as well then return to the mother of your child you left being rushed into hospital.
Perhaps some of the disappointment here stems from viewers approaching this thinking as I did: that Marty would discover the baby had died. Even though that dramatic comeuppance didn't happen, I didn't see the tears as a Damascene moment. As Matt said, perfectly feasible (and just as common) for the actual first sight of your child to be a moment of great emotion with no real long-term impact on your behaviour. The shot felt of a piece with the comment to Rachel mentioned above: he says or does one thing, but the conclusions you draw from it are quite plausibly another.

I don't want to overegg the film: I fear the middle section may sag more noticeably for me on second viewing, as has happened in the past for other frantic affairs such as Anora. Even so, this was a fine way to see out 2025.

[Mr Sausage]

Yeah, I thought this was a pure shot of adrenaline. It's a sheer technical feat to sustain this kind of energy for 2.5 hours. The only thing I can compare it to is the otherwise totally dissimilar Black Hawk Down, a movie that also succeeds through a total commitment to brio. But I loved Matt's earlier comparison to Raging Bull, because like that one, tho' with considerably less poetry, Marty Supreme drops you into the world of an ugly but fascinating individual to experience something of their weird life. But I find Never Cursed's description of the movie as an invitation to empathy bizarre, as the movie has little interest in bringing you into the headspace of Marty Mauser. Marty as presented has no real interiority; everything in him is projected outward. He is all surface. The movie doesn't bring you into the character, but blast that character's energy at you, so that you get a 2.5 hour demonstration of what it's like to be in that man's presence (but not so much in his shoes). It's more a thrill ride than a character study, an experience of a certain kind of life rather than a particular way of thinking or feeling. The movie in no way requires you to share or even understand any of Marty's decision making, just stare in a kind of horrified glee as he wreaks destruction in pursuit of a very specific goal: an objective correlative to his own feeling of personal greatness. And it's a blast.

Marty is such a particularly American kind of success story. He's like Augie March or Duddy Kravitz (ok, the last one's Canadian...), a man of endless energy who hopes to shore up his success through refusing to accept failure. Everything is opportunity, every avenue promises success, no matter how small, you only need to keep hustling and striving and moving as fast as you can, and you'll get there. Tho' of course this proves destructive, and ends up grinding down the characters as much as anything. And Marty is such an absolute shit: my favourite example is how he accumulates details about people to use against them later. The moment he hears about Rockwell's son, he never lets it go, making it variously a weapon to hurt hurt him, a negotiating tactic to unsettle him, and an escape tool to play on his sympathies. That's the biggest instance, but Marty does it throughout with everyone. It's a well observed detail. But to me Marty is a portrait of the American character in all its ambivalence: full of itself, grand standing, yet capable of greatness; addicted to winning and success, and yet also defining itself by its resilience to failure; full of vigour and brio, adapting to circumstance and persevering through difficulties, but also enormously self involved, self deluding, and destructive because of it. So the movie is a contradictory experience, full of exhilaration and repulsion, an equal desire to see someone win and lose. I find that kind of mix appealing.

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This movie is very much the gentler sibling to Good Time and Uncut Gems. All three movies subscribe to a Thomas Hardy-esque idea of character as fate. There is no failure or success that will leave these characters anywhere but where they've always been. Their destinies are written into who they are. So the fact that Marty Supreme ends on a happier note is something of a violation of the logic of Safdie's worlds. But the movie kinda gets away with it. For instance, it gives Marty a tangible goal to succeed at, while Howard and Connie are merely trying to stay afloat. The best the latter two can attain is not making things any worse. But Marty has somewhere to go, tho' he's caught in purgatory trying to reach it. So the fact that he attains success in Japan is ok, because winning a game was always in his character, and even that victory is true to his character because it's still just self-glorification earned at other people's expense (including his rival, whose upcoming victory at the actual tournament has been rendered meaningless, while a victory over Marty at the exhibition would've been equally meaningless). It also helps that many of the people most fucked over are pretty ghoulish. The hospital scene, tho'? Much less earned, tho' it comes as a welcome reprieve. If nothing else it's a reward to the audience for sitting through such white knuckle energy and miserable behaviour. It's nice to get a quiet moment of emotion, and to leave the theatre not feeling entirely steamrolled. I don't think it's out of character for Marty to behave like he does at the end--he's rarely indifferent to people being physically hurt, and a child is a narcissist's favourite extension of themselves (just to overstate a point). But blus argument, that Marty's tears don't signal real change in him and so aren't technically an unearned redemption, is also a point the movie is trying to elide. By cutting off where it does, the way it does, it is manipulating the audience into having an untroubled satisfaction at Marty's success. I'd say the movie doesn't want you to think about whether Marty will ruin what he's just gained, too. It wants its character to have his moment, and for the audience to uncomplicatedly enjoy that. So, yeah, I think the movie's logic of character as fate is pushed aside for the sake of pleasing the audience, and that's a flaw. Not a major one, not one that inspires me to moralistic judgements, but still, a flaw.

[beamish14]

I definitely see the Mordecai Richler parallels here. A few people have noted its similarities to some of Bernard Malamud’s work as well

[Mr Sausage]

There's a strain of North American Jewish literary output that this movie is very in line with. That the movie is set in the time period in which many of those those books were coming out certainly helps.

[Never Cursed]

But I find Never Cursed's description of the movie as an invitation to empathy bizarre, as the movie has little interest in bringing you into the headspace of Marty Mauser. Marty as presented has no real interiority; everything in him is projected outward. He is all surface. The movie doesn't bring you into the character, but blast that character's energy at you, so that you get a 2.5 hour demonstration of what it's like to be in that man's presence (but not so much in his shoes).

I don't think I said this? I certainly didn't mean it.

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Very little of this movie is spent just with Marty because he's an inherently manipulative social actor and it can be (for my money it is) fun and insightful to spend an extended period of time watching someone like that do his thing to other people, but that doesn't mean he has no thoughts beyond the ones he vocalizes. The movie may or may not have invited me to do so, but I read Marty as a half-adult motivated by a number of fears applicable to people at that place in their life. He doesn't want to be an eternal member of the lower class, selling shoes and living in a tenement apartment, and rejects or fights information that he worries will lead him down that path. I do not think that accepting that at least some of Marty's posturing is a method of hiding self-assessed weaknesses and vulnerabilities, including but not limited to an implicit acceptance of his parentage of a child that is unconvincingly papered over by his knee-jerk reaction to the claim, requires an exceptional feat of empathic connection to the character. (It is the method by which I made other parts of the movie make sense and cohere, like Marty's seemingly-incidental conversation with Tyler The Creator's character about his family and sexual practices). Similarly, I'm still not sure why it can't simultaneously be true that Marty is a narcissistic, immature, self-centered asshole, and that he can have an enormous emotional outpouring triggered by something frequently depicted as one of the greatest and most affecting parts of life by empaths and narcissists alike. I think Marty's studied bluster might have been a little too effective for some viewers, convincing them that lying is the only thing he can do outside of playing ping-pong. A manipulator he is, but that doesn't mean it's all he does or is capable of.

[Mr Sausage]

I was responding to what you said above during the BrianC/therewillbeblus argument (emphasis mine):

Not sure how it’s “in bad faith” to reply to negative responses to a movie that asks you to empathize with a selfish person by noting that those viewers were unwilling or unable to do what the movie asked of them.

I think the film is asking us to witness Marty Mauser, but I'm not sure it needs us to empathize with him.

it can be (for my money it is) fun and insightful to spend an extended period of time watching someone like that do his thing to other people, but that doesn't mean he has no thoughts beyond the ones he vocalizes.

I think you've misunderstood me to be saying that Marty, as a human, is a particularly empty example of a human being or some such. But I wasn't talking about him as a person, I was talking about the type of character representation that the movie is using. You'll have to excuse me for endlessly using lit references, but Marty Supreme is more like Dickens in this way: its characters are externalized rather than internalized. We're not invited into an internal world, but told everything about the character by those things being brought forward onto their surface. An (extreme) example of the opposite would be Taxi Driver, where Travis Bickle's character is revealed through the successive layers of his thinking. We're told little about the character by how he outwardly is, to the point that his outer life is pretty mysterious unless you spend a lot of time diving into his inner world. Marty? You don't need access to his thoughts, just a small amount of context (which you've enumerated, and that the film spends only the barest necessary time on), and then the rest is him showing us who he is in successive scenes, without much mystery about who he is or what choices he'll make.

Empathy is, for me anyway, usually the domain of art that represents its characters' interiority, while art that exteriorizes is more the province of sympathy or compassion (not mutually exclusive with empathy, but not needing it either). With Marty Supreme I got a great idea of what it's like to be in Marty Mauser's orbit, but felt little invitation to enter his consciousness, whatever that would be. And I'm happy with that, because I agree entirely that it's fun and insightful to spend time with extreme personalities like this, even when they're negative--maybe especially when they're negative.

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Similarly, I'm still not sure why it can't simultaneously be true that Marty is a narcissistic, immature, self-centered asshole, and that he can have an enormous emotional outpouring triggered by something frequently depicted as one of the greatest and most affecting parts of life by empaths and narcissists alike. I think Marty's studied bluster might have been a little too effective for some viewers, convincing them that lying is the only thing he can do outside of playing ping-pong. A manipulator he is, but that doesn't mean it's all he does or is capable of.

But I didn't say those two things can't be true. Indeed my exact words were "I don't think it's out of character for Marty to behave like he does at the end". For me the violation is not in Marty' behaviour, but the structure and placement of the scene itself. Marty may well be capable of a range of emotions given the situation (we only see him in a narrow range of situations). But that the film suddenly gives us a rare unadulterated positive emotion for another human from Marty there, at the end, after he's achieved his goal, and then cuts immediately to black, does effect the meaning of everything we just saw. And there's an argument to be made that it's a bit of a cheat, whether of the moral variety (not me) or the thematic variety (me). But, again, for me it's a flaw that gives me pause but doesn't sink the movie. Personally I think it would've been truer to the spirit of the film if Marty had been waylaid on his way to the hospital by another blockage needing hustle, his big moment deferred to some point outside the film, but now I'm getting into the weeds of imagining a different movie.

Anyway, we both really like the movie, but maybe you like the ending slightly more than me.

[Mr Sausage]

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The early Auschwitz story is surely meant to be contrasted with Marty's selfishness as well as Rockwell's prejudices.

Something I forgot to touch on, but I think there are contrasting interpretations here. There's what you say, but then there's how it's shot, with the man standing golden and shining in the dark, his arms outspread, with all these faceless people crowded around feeding off this radiant figure. For the story-teller this is the vagaries of luck and survival; for Howard, a rebuke to his selfishness; but for Marty, it's a vision of personal triumph and success out of the bleakest circumstances, where you get to be a god before everyone else. I think the way the honey licking scene is shot is showing us how Marty might interpret the story, another projection of the man's self-involvement.

[Never Cursed]

I was responding to what you said above during the BrianC/therewillbeblus argument (emphasis mine):

Not sure how it’s “in bad faith” to reply to negative responses to a movie that asks you to empathize with a selfish person by noting that those viewers were unwilling or unable to do what the movie asked of them.

I think the film is asking us to witness Marty Mauser, but I'm not sure it needs us to empathize with him.

At least how I took it, the movie is asking you at the very least to understand why Marty is acting the way he does and to react with greater understanding than schadenfreude when bad things happen to him. In other words, I don't agree with you when you say that the movie "in no way requires you to share or even understand any of Marty's decision making." Marty's place in the world, in history, and in his ersatz, toxic social circle are aspects that imbued his decision-making process with meaning for me. These are empathic responses to an extent, but it doesn't make the movie an invitation to empathy. The movie does not make it easy to empathize (or sympathize) with Marty, but that doesn't mean it can't be done, nor that the reactions to the film that in my view dismissed Marty's humanity are (in my view) appropriate, which is what that sentence was about, and what I was really reacting to. I separately agree that the film prioritizes external rather than internal development of the characters, but that doesn't mean that Marty lacks an internal dimension (that "Marty as presented has no real interiority"), just that it isn't stated with the same force as his outward projection of hostility and self-centeredness. Other elements of the movie, particularly those grounded in the period of its setting, as you outline above in the most recent spoilered post, are a method of expressing through shorthand the internal aspects of his character.

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Developments like the spanking scene, for instance, would not make sense if Marty was not immersed in the post-WW2 cultural moments of American superiority and post-Holocaust Jewish victimhood, and if those historical moments were not used to serve as a signifier for how Marty (and, in that scene, Kevin O'Leary's character, too) feels, thinks, and evaluates situations. This is taken to an even greater extreme at the climactic tournament, where Marty is asked to not only lose, but to engage in an act of consumptive humiliation designed to wound him as a Jew that ultimately breaks him again and triggers his call for an on-the-spot rematch.

As for the final scene, that's fair, but I don't know if I have much to add beyond that I don't see the film as operating in the "character-as-fate" mode and thus don't find the ending a violation of some fundamental principle of Josh Safdie's creative rules. I don't even necessarily think Uncut Gems was, but I can see how its ending could be read as more closely fitting those parameters. Marty Supreme certainly wants to give its main character a moment of grace at the end more altogether positive than the coup de grâce Howard Rater received, but I don't think it requires an audience to accept this grace moment as a good thing without serious caveats. At the very least anecdotally, I have heard a number of separate interpretations among the people I know who have seen the film who read the ending as a number of different things, none of them completely pleasant.

[Mr Sausage]

I think you're inadvertently straw manning me? It seems like you've understood 'the film doesn't need us to empathize with [Marty]' to mean there is no empathy or understanding offered here, in an absolute sense. But that's not reasonable. When people make a statement like mine above, they mean relatively.

So finding this or that bit that allows us to infer Marty's thoughts or feelings is not an argument against me. Yes, the film does throw in bits of context or behaviour that may allow us to infer things about Marty. But those bits are present to a small degree, and the movie makes no connections for us, nor requires those connections for the plot and themes to make basic sense. This is why I keep saying that the film doesn't "require" or "need" us to empathize or understand or whatever. It's not a crucial component of the narrative (again, which is not to say it isn't a component of the narrative at all). You can sit there utterly bewildered at what Marty's doing and why and still come away with much of the intended experience of the film. On the other hand, if you come out of Taxi Driver utterly bewildered at what Travis Bickle is doing and why, the movie is going to fall flat. That movie needs/requires you to enter Travis Bickle's mental world to get anything from it at all. These are not criticisms, just basic statements about what the films are doing.

Also worth emphasizing that it's really hard to know what Marty actually thinks or feels about a lot of things, and not just because he's always hustling and gaming, even weaponizing what appears to be self awareness. You say some things about Jewish identity, but...what are Marty's thoughts about Jewish identity? When he seems to be humiliated as a Jew, does he feel that racial component, or is it neither here nor there to the larger affront to his personal ego? Or are those two things synonymous in his mind? Hard to know--and the movie isn't especially concerned with giving possible answers. Again, relatively speaking, it's not a movie that spends much time bringing us into the interior world of its main character. It prefers to set us adjacent to him so we can experience something of his personal whirlwind.

I'm not sure we disagree all that much. Maybe I'm just being too obscure. But I'm guessing we had very similar experiences watching this movie and enjoy it for broadly similar reasons.

[Red Screamer]

Great discussion from you both. I think it’s worth pointing out that

Spoiler

re: Sausage’s point about placement, the ending also brings the movie full circle to its opening credits, which otherwise seem a bit jokey. But on the other hand, the reverse shots of the baby are pointedly ones of wailing and squirming.