Marty Supreme

Yesterday I went to see Marty Supreme, the new movie with Timothée Chalamet. While it’s not a 2026 movie, I’m eager to kick off the year of movies with a Something on this, the first day of the year.

The film follows Marty Mauser, a world-class ping pong player desperate to be the greatest. The story centers on his conflict with Endo Koto, the player for Japan, and Marty’s struggles to be able to attend the 1952 British Open, and later the World Championships. In character, Mauser’s narcissism and monomaniacal obsession with his sport recall Chalamet’s 2024 depiction of a young Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown. In structure and emotional tone, the movie reminded me a lot 2019’s Uncut Gems, the panic attack of a movie starring Adam Sandler as a gambling-obsessed gem dealer trying to recover a lost jewel. Now that I look at the credits, that makes a ton of sense: Uncut gems was directed by the Safdie brothers Josh and Benny, and cowritten by them and Ronald Bronstein; Marty Supreme has the same credentials, minus the involvement of Benny Safdie.

I was really struck by how historically charged the atmosphere of the movie was. 1952 was just seven years after the end of World War II, and many of the characters wear scars of the time: tattoos from Auschwitz, hearing loss from the Tokyo air raids, the painful memory of a lost son. My picture of the “postwar period” is dominated by the Korean war -- the product of a childhood spent rewatching M*A*S*H -- so I found novel this picture of a world of damaged people heaving a collective sigh and going back to work.

The dramatic final match takes place in Japan in 1952. I didn’t know much about this period of Japanese history, so I did some reading up. After Japan’s surrender on September 2nd 1945, the nation entered a seven-year period of American occupation. During this time the civil government still operated separately from the occupying army, but underwent dramatic changes at their demand including the institution of a new American-written constitution. Among other changes, Article 9 of this constitution banned the country from maintaining an army of its own. In the first years of occupation a primary goal was to demilitarize the country by removing 200,000 wartime officials from government posts and restructuring finance and industry to make it less able to support a military. Rising Cold War tensions and American concerns over the spread of communism in the far east led to the reversal of much of that work.

In 1952 the US-Japan Security Treaty went into effect, which along with the Treaty of San Francisco ended the occupation, reestablished Japan as a sovereign nation, and created the military alliance between the US and Japan that lasts to this day. These were hotly disputed among the members of government and the people of Japan, who variously believed that Japan: should not continue to be occupied by 260,000 US troops; should not risk being drawn into US-Soviet conflicts; and should not create a standing army. Widespread protests occurred throughout the country, including the Bloody May Day Incident. In 1950 criticism from Joseph Stalin had caused the Japanese Communist Party to reverse their policy of peaceful protest and attempt to foment revolution. Members and supporters of the party infiltrated the peaceful union May Day protest and incited a violent confrontation between protestors and police. In the ensuing chaos 2300 people were injured, and 2 were killed.

It is into this uncertain world that Marty inserts himself in the movie’s third act. While the plot doesn’t delve into the local politics, the tension between the people of Japan and the American GIs is on full display. If you’re interested in seeing a contemporary Japanese perspective on this period, the 1960 film Dry Lake (aka Youth in Fury) follows a university student entangled in the mass protests against the revised security treaty. The director, Masahiro Shinoda, is one of the greats of Japanese New Wave cinema. My two favorites of his are Demon Pond, an adaptation of a kabuki play by the same name, and Silence, a movie following two Jesuit priests who illegally enter 16th century Japan to spread the word of Christianity.

If you like the ping pong angle but want something a bit more heartfelt and less cynical, I highly recommend the incredible Ping Pong the Animation.

That’s all for this first Something. I wish you all a happy new year, and may you see many movies that make you say “I’m an immortal vampire born in 1601.”