Josh Safdie

There’s a moment in Marty Supreme when someone tells the title character to stay calm. I generally don’t like spoiling things, but given that the movie was directed by Josh Safdie—and given that Marty (surname Mauser) is played as a bundle of raw nerves and febrile energy by Timothée Chalamet—I feel comfortable in informing you that this advice proves unsuccessful. Asking Marty Mauser not to get agitated is like asking the earth not to rotate on its axis. It’s a plea in defiance of natural order.

The cinema of the Safdie Brothers, which includes grubby scraps like Good Time and Heaven Knows What, places a premium on speed and shock while also championing aesthetic ugliness in the name of visceral authenticity. They found the right calibration on Uncut Gems, their 2019 tour de force of addictive anxiety, before venturing out on their own. Benny recently made The Smashing Machine, a solid enough picture that was largely forgettable outside of Dwayne Johnson’s committed performance. Marty Supreme is hardly a perfect movie, but it sure is a memorable one. It’s got sex and violence and mad dogs and crooked cops and Chalamet’s bare ass and Gwyneth Paltrow in mink-wrapped lingerie. Josh Safdie may have gone solo, but he hasn’t gone acoustic; he remains committed to pulverizing viewers with volume and intensity, resulting in an experience that straddles the line between exhilarating and exhausting. Read More