A whacking time of it.

I didn’t know much about this movie before going in, only that it starred Timothy Chalamet, it was about table tennis, and it was touted as an Oscar contender before it was even released. I wanted to see it. This is part of a larger intention on the part of me and my husband to see more movies and less series. Recently that’s been Eddington and One Battle After Another on streaming, with plans to use those fabulous Regal gift cards for Marty Supreme and Hamnet.

Okay. I have a soft spot for the kind of movie where nothing goes right for our hero, whether or not his disasters are of his own making. That starts way back at It’s a Wonderful Life and stretches through What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and Dan in Real Life and Inside Llewyn Davis and The Joker on up to, well, Eddington, One Battle After Another, and now Marty Supreme. There is something intensely compelling in watching human action in the face of one battle after another (see what I did there). It’s the basis of action movies, which I don’t usually watch, and these movies, where the catastrophes are small and personal.

And this isn’t about the so-called likeability of the character at all. Llewyn Davis was a self-centered prick who was somehow unable to make one good decision. Still, I was fiercely urging him on. My heart was bleeding for Phoenix’s Joker and he was a psychopath. In Eddington, another of Phoenix’s characters bumbled from one catastrophe to another, continuously making his situation less and less survivable. Everyone in that movie was either insane or corrupt except for one character, who in the final shot of the movie is radicalized and ready to wreak havoc for what has been done to him. Still, I didn’t regret watching it, and I understood the characters.

I’m not saying that any of these movies are a walk in the park, a feel-good afternoon with popcorn. I’m saying that if I can find the terrifying actions of Colonel Lockjaw compelling, understandable, and impossible not to watch, I have a high tolerance for monomaniacal assholes on the big screen.

I couldn’t stand to watch Marty Mauser.

He made no sense to me. He left behind a trail of mayhem in the name of WHAT. He actually destroyed cars, homes, reputations, businesses, and LIVES. He underwent utter humiliation and wreaked physical havoc on everyone he met in order to get where he believed he belonged. He was not a man whose triumph I could possibly celebrate.

The movie, as a piece of work, has a complex, twisting script that is word-for-word brilliant. Every single thing about the production is perfectly done. There are moments, especially those around the women in Marty’s life, that are so compelling. I mean, watching Fran Descher actually act, with not much more to work with besides the conflicted intensity of a mother’s gaze? The graceful faded swan that is Gwyneth Paltrow? The fecund beauty and spirited-if-misplaced loyalty of Odessa A’zion?

Those are the women, but every single actor is a marvel, in fact. Koto Kawaguchi invests his character with a focused grace that is the absolute opposite of Marty. This performance was the standout of the movie for me, the perfect counterpoint to all of Marty’s bombast and frenetic energy. I could go on about Tyler the Creator and Kevin O’Leary, but they are just at the top of a list of actors who invest every part with humanity, no matter how small. I mean, even the rubes at the bowling alley are magnificent. There’s also a dog that gives his all, a dog that arrives covered in shit and is last seen barking and snarling as if he will rip apart anyone near him.

And yet, folks.

And yet. Chalamet knifes his way through his role with pointed intensity, hitting every note, never stopping for an instant, fully committed to his destiny as the table tennis king. Was it actually his job to enlist me in this quest? If so, he failed. For me, he was like that dog, a loud, terrifying catastrophe waiting to sink his teeth into anyone to get out, out, out and on his way to wherever he thinks he needs to be. He did what he needed to do perfectly, but I didn’t want him anywhere near me.

That’s my review. I’d love to hear what you think of the movie.