What do you like? Why you can hate Timothée Chalamet’s character and still love Marty Supreme | Marty Supreme

IIn the new hit film Marty Supreme, the story is pushed forward by how main character Marty Mauser keeps making a mess, and then instead of cleaning it up, manages to expand it beyond reason. Marty attempts to prove himself as the world’s greatest table tennis champion, to escape his meager circumstances in mid-century New York City and fulfill a dream he has held onto, seemingly more out of a desire to fulfill it than his love for the sport.

As he supposedly blows up some normal athleticism in a monomaniacal endeavor, all of Marty’s misdeeds throughout the film escalate. He flatters and then lies. He quickly turns an opportunistic request to borrow money into a petty theft, which then becomes an armed robbery. At one point, a small ping-pong rant at a New Jersey bowling alley led to a gas station fire. Marty will not accept anything less than ultimate victory, which means he will not particularly accept responsibility for his actions. We, in the audience, are invited to like him anyway, at least in part because he is played by Timothée Chalamet.

Since Marty Supreme has reached such a large audience, this last part has become a sticking point, at least for some. There are plenty of videos on YouTube and TikTok asking why, exactly, we’re supposed to happily follow this semi-sociopathic character for over two hours, causing publications like Variety to comment on how likable Marty (and Chalamet) is.

This isn’t the first beloved contestant-inspired conversation this awards season, and it won’t be the last. But it seems to be the first time in a while that this kind of bewilderment (or absurdity) has been expressed towards a male hero in particular. The self-interested heroes in Best Picture nominees like Birdman, American Hustle, Joker, or Once Upon a Time in Hollywood don’t seem to inspire much discourse about whether they’re appropriate male role models; These discussions often turn to women, especially in depictions of motherhood, such as Jennifer Lawrence’s character in the recent film Die My Love. This film barely seems to be in the awards conversation despite a brave turn from Lawrence, partly because of the enormous difficulty audiences have found in getting the film’s aggressive, “unpleasant” wavelength.

So, in a way, descending into worrying about how likable Marty Mauser is seems odd. But maybe there’s still some socializing going on here; It’s hard to unpack the likability of Marty from Chalamet himself, particularly his combination of a leaner, more stereotypically “feminine” appearance and an almost sarcastic masculine bravado (in the film and its relentless promotion of it). Instead of his star appeal dampening Marty’s bad behavior, Chalamet’s beauty (and appeal to female fans) seems to further inflame anyone who might not be convinced by his high status.

It’s happened time and time again with Chalamet’s closest counterpart in ambition and star power: Leonardo DiCaprio — who has recently been greeted by audiences and critics as an absolute likable as he plays a burned-out former extremist who is semi-competent in battle after battle. But in films like Killers of the Flower Moon and especially The Wolf of Wall Street, DiCaprio has faced questions about whether he and the films in question glorify criminals simply by depicting them at such length. DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort (as Marty Mauser, based on the real-life character, though Marty Supreme’s adaptation is much looser) has been a particular subject of outrage, with concern over whether audiences can truly recognize Belfort’s criminality when cast in the image of superstar Leo.

Complaining about how likable a character is while also worrying about copying bad behavior is putting yourself above the rest of the audience; Sure, you understand how bad this guy is, but what about all the idiots who aren’t enlightened? Let’s assume, though, that at least some of the objections to Marty Supreme are not anxiety-seeking but genuine hatred: a visceral reaction against spending 150 minutes with such a selfish idiot (and doubt as to whether the film’s ending begins to redeem it). Who couldn’t relate to the feeling of animal hatred towards a fresh-faced baby? As it happens, I get that from a lot of YouTubers and TikTokers who berate me.

But lingering questions about a character’s appeal—his ability to serve as a rooting interest, an audience-identifying figure, or even a charismatic antihero—can feel like both a certain curse and a gift of cinema. A novel can (if the author so chooses) delve more deeply into the psychology of a particular character, and while there will always be readers who, say, complain about Holden Caulfield’s nagging, there are also plenty of English teachers who can guide readers through The Catcher in the Rye or other books where the protagonist may not be viewed as a likable underdog (or whatever students have wrongly been trained to expect from literature).

But movies don’t come with the same degree of education. We don’t learn much about how or why we “read” them as students, and they are presented primarily as entertainment. As much as they can and should be vehicles for much more, mainstream cinema has also spent more than a century basking in the glow of stars. The job of a movie star, after all, is to attract our attention and hold our attention, even if the immediate circumstances surrounding him may seem to us unfamiliar, obtuse, or boring. When a star pushes too hard, too soon, against this innate expectation of likability, it can feel like a broken contract.

The art of cinema is more than just demanding shiny objects for our entertainment, of course, but it is also uniquely capable of providing those shiny objects. Impressively boring conversations may be the price we pay for this deception – which will never work equally well for every member of the audience. Some who criticize Chalamet’s snotty, bloated nonchalance in Marty Supreme may find themselves, 20 years later, watching Chalamet play an equally “unlikable” character and being impressed by him anyway. I’m honestly not entirely convinced that there’s literary depth to The Sins of Marty Mauser, but then, it also never occurred to me to break up with Marty Supreme for that reason. In a cinema culture that often seems to aspire to uniformity, allowing time to be spent in the company of immoral or unsavory characters can seem like a strange magic trick. Popularity may be an unfair demand on cinema, but such an expansive medium is, in the long run, more than adequate to the task.