“I could sell shoes to an amputee!” Such brazen, jarringly self-assured statements bellow across Josh Safdie’s timeless and transcendent portrait of a gifted ping-pong athlete with a god complex—who shamelessly indulges in ludicrous extremes to realize his destiny. In the pantheon of iconic movie characters, there’s a sure place reserved for the nervy, sublime Marty Supreme. Set in the ‘50s and energetically soundtracked to the ‘80s (featuring stellar needle drops from Tears for Fears and Alphaville), Safdie’s follow-up to Uncut Gems deliriously etches an enthralling, mercurial portrait of a dreamer so destructive he puts Icarus to shame.

As it immerses us in its gorgeously textured milieu of 1950s New York or dazzles us with its sumptuous, anachronistic synth score by Daniel Lopatin (AKA Oneohtrix Point Never), what remains at the kaleidoscopic core of Marty Supreme is a mythic study of the dog-eat-dog American Dream. All distilled into a man who can’t help but eat himself alive on the fine line between his infectious confidence and being a complete loser.

Timothee Chalamet, in a career-defining turn, stars as table tennis maestro Marty Mauser, whose bespeckled, geeky look contrasts with his pompous, uber-confident ambition. He knows life has more in store for him than his uncle’s lame shoe store, and he wants everyone to know.

After falling just short of the world table tennis championship, he barrels down a gonzo, anxiety-inducing odyssey to get enough travel money to make the next tournament in Tokyo—sifting through frisky flings with a washed up movie star, harebrained hustles with his friend Wally (Tyler “the Creator” Okonma), and demeaning deals with ink Magnate, Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary, who, In a wild ensemble, is the film’s greatest stroke of casting genius).

Unfolding as a quasi-spiritual successor to the neuroses of Uncut Gems’ Howard Ratner, Marty Supreme sees Safdie firmly cement a collection of palpably lived-in, riveting characters who’ve come to define the first quarter century of American cinema. Though undeniably scummy, scheming, and self-obsessed, our protagonist manifests as a figure we hate to love, because to dream as big and wild as Marty is to live—he’s the American nightmare made manifest.

Reuniting with cinematographer Darius Khondji, Safdie renders mid-century America with a grainy, romantic, yet digital feel, full of crystalline lens flares and comically unhinged transitions that catapult this film into a realm between the past and present, eschewing easy definitions and predictable moments at every turn. Hurdling through immensely cathartic sports sequences and wonderfully slimy verbal jabs, Safdie and company ensnare us in the life and times of one of the most gorgeous scumbags ever committed to film.

Opening with one of the most bonkers title sequences in recent memory and then wildly sustaining its high for the remaining 150 minutes, Marty Supreme survives as a deeply romantic ode to fighting for your dreams, even if they don’t amount to much. After all, in a cutthroat America, is there any other way to live?

Marty Supreme is in theatres on Dec. 25th.