Will ‘Marty Supreme’ be a career-defining role for Timothée Chalamet?
If you didn’t already know who Timothée Chalamet was before 2017, there was no way of escaping the new talent that year, with two of his films winding up nominated for ‘Best Picture’ at the Oscars.
While he played a pivotal supporting role as the quintessential fuckboy in Lady Bird, he showed his range by embodying a sensitive teenage boy navigating his sexuality, somewhere in Northern Italy, with a leading role in Call Me By Your Name.
Since then, Chalamet has been hard to ignore, starring in the biggest releases of each year, pretty much. From leading the sci-fi epic Dune as Paul Atreides to taking on the role of Bob Dylan in the flashy biopic A Complete Unknown, Chalamet has refused to box himself into one genre, which is pretty admirable. He even showed that he was unafraid to be painfully silly when he played the singing chocolate maker in Wonka – a role a far cry from cannibals, shoplifters, and student revolutionaries.
Maybe you’re sick of Chalamet or you don’t get the hype, but you can’t deny that he’s a versatile star, and he’s incredibly dedicated, too. Chalamet’s preparation for A Complete Unknown was extensive, and he really did come to sound like the iconic folk singer. Talking to Rolling Stone, he revealed, “I had three months of my life to play Bob Dylan, after five years of preparing to play him. So while I was in it, that was my eternal focus. He deserved that and then more.… God forbid I missed a step because I was being Timmy. I could be Timmy for the rest of my life!”
Yet, the movie was simply Oscar bait. It was so obvious that Chalamet playing Dylan was a stab at Academy Award success; he hadn’t been nominated since 2018, after all. Now, I’m not saying that he only took on the role for this reason – those years of preparation reflect a genuine interest in bringing Dylan’s story to the big screen – but with most biopics about huge names, there was certainly a whiff of Oscar bait in the air, as promotion for the film teased Chalamet’s transformation into the singer, a complex lover, a revolutionary artist. And it worked; Chalamet was nominated in the ‘Best Actor’ category, although he lost out to Adrien Brody.
While some thought that playing Dylan was going to be his career-defining role, I’d argue that a movie shrouded in such Oscar buzz just can’t earn the title. So, what about Marty Supreme? Critics who have already caught the film ahead of its Christmas release are heralding it as the actor’s finest performance to date – better than Dune, better than Call Me By Your Name, better than A Complete Unknown.
Could this be it for Chalamet? Is this the movie that defines his whole career? When you watch the trailer, you instantly feel that the actor has found a role that totally fits him unlike anything else. There seemed to be a slight disconnect between Chalamet and Wonka, despite the fun he seemed to be having, but here, as the ambitious table-tennis star Marty Reisman, he looks totally at home.
Perhaps the actor can relate to Reisman’s desperate ambition to become the best he can possibly be in his field. While Marty Supreme is touted as a story of intense obsession and a ruthless desire to make it, that innate wanting for success is something many of us, like Chalamet, can resonate with.
When Chalamet won a SAG Award for A Complete Unknown, he said in his speech, “I know we’re in a subjective business, but the truth is, I’m really in pursuit of greatness.” That’s what it comes down to – he wants to be one of the best in the business, so he pours everything he has into each project, and with Marty Supreme, it feels like a culmination of all his efforts to reach the top finally paying off.
While he was painstakingly preparing to become Dylan, the actor was also trying to be Reisman, spending seven years practising table tennis for the film, not knowing exactly when the project would materialise. In director Josh Safdie, it seems like Chalamet has found an equal – someone who isn’t afraid to be a little ridiculous, but ultimately daring and brave in his artistic approach. Chalamet and Safdie have always seemed destined to work together, and now it has finally happened, after a friendship pushing close to a decade and countless games of table tennis.
“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. I got myself an Airbnb in a town [around] Saint-Tropez after The French Dispatch, overlooking the water, and I was taking lessons there,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.
This is a project that evidently means a lot to Chalamet, and when you throw that much energy into a role, dedicating yourself to the pursuit of greatness no matter what, it’s a sign that you’re going places. And for Chalamet, it sounds like he’s heading straight towards Oscar-winning success with Marty Supreme, which might just be his most honest, visceral, and intense role yet. Only this time, it doesn’t feel like Oscar buzz, it feels like pure artistic passion.
