Every once in a while something lands on you and you have to pause and ask yourself, Did that really happen? What am I looking at? What did they say? Really?!? It’s like, Wait. Whaaaat?
I decided that I would write about these times in order to just ask the question and then let it all go.
MARTY SUPREME
I first time I saw him, I did not like the character, Marty Supreme. Marty Supreme stars Timothée Chalamet, Gwenyth Paltrow, Odessa A’dion, and shout out to Fran Drescher. It was a good movie. The characters were complex. The performances were excellent. The cinematography and the writing were top notch. I’m sure the Oscars will be kind at a minimum.
But Marty Supreme, the main character, is a hustler. A shyster. And the supporting characters were shysters too. The mother, the girlfriend, the best friend. Even the minor characters made ultimatums, told lies, and carried guns. The characters found themselves in situations that required running, deceit, death, and destruction. And what movie with all those elements doesn’t have the potential to be a great movie, especially with the acting chops of the stars.
The movie was unsettling though. Irritating. I just didn’t want to hear another lie. Another slick way to wiggle out of accountability. I didn’t want to have to look at another needy narcissist surrounded by other needy narcissists trying to persuade people to do what he wants them to do. It was too much. Too close to the reality of our current lives. This is just a movie -albeit about a real person. As the audience, we want to believe him, we do. We want him to succeed, but just like everyone else, we are persuaded by the possibility that he will not hurt us with another lie; that he will do whatever it takes to turn everything around because he loves us. He tells us so a few times. But we fall into his weak promises and are disappointed.
SPOILER ALERT — At the end, the main character -who finally meets his immediate goal with his power of talk, but not his main goal of winning the international table tennis tournament- cries when he sees his newborn baby through the glass of a hospital maternity ward.
That moment is the only moment when the main character does not want something from someone for his own gain. That is the moment when the character seems redeemable. A moment that gives the audience the opportunity to believe this character. That’s when all the negative energy funnels into Marty Supreme’s heart and is transformed to a real possibility that we should trust. But then there is the other shoe. The one inside the shoe store where the story begins.
That is also the moment when the trope of a black woman caring for a white baby hits me. Wait. Whaaat? Was the black nurse the only black woman in the movie??? I started to watch the movie again just to be sure, but I stopped. While the second viewing of the movie was not as much of an affront to my moral compass as the first viewing, I didn’t want to have go searching for her. The movie takes place decades ago, and black folks -especially women- were hidden into invisibility in films.
What did I expect? I expected not to have to search to see a reflection of myself somewhere sooner than the end, and I expected to see that character more prominently. But that’s another story.