On Christmas, director Josh Safdie released his new film, Marty Supreme, starring Timothée Chalamet as a young table-tennis player bent on global recognition. Like Safdie’s previous film—Uncut Gems, co-directed with his brother Benny Safdie—Marty Supreme focuses on an American Jewish antihero and unfolds in a deeply Jewish milieu. But while Uncut Gems takes place in present-day New York, Marty Supreme transports us back to the Lower East Side of 1952, examining American Jewish ambition in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust and amid assimilation into whiteness. This mid-century setting is complicated by various anachronistic elements, including a soundtrack rooted in the ’80s and, perhaps most notably, Chalamet’s conspicuous lack of a period-accurate accent. On this episode of On the Nose, Jewish Currents editor-in-chief Arielle Angel, senior editor Nathan Goldman, contributing editor David Klion, and contributing writer Mitch Abidor discuss what, if anything, the film has to say about American Jewishness then and now.

Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”

Media Mentioned and Further Reading

Uncut Gems, dir. Josh and Benny Safdie

“An Unserious Man,” Jewish Currents

“Marty Supreme’s Megawatt Personality,” Richard Brody, The New Yorker

What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg

Erik Baker’s Letterboxd review

Marie Antoinette, dir. Sofia Coppola

Anti-Semite and Jew by Jean-Paul Sartre

“Marty Supreme Is the Moment, With Josh Safdie!,” The Big Picture

Tough Jews by Rich Cohen

Mari Cohen on Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You, Jewish Currents Shabbat Reading List

“Demon Doubt,” Vivian Gornick, interview by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, Boston Review

“Is This Anything?,” Mitchell Abidor, Jewish Currents