In Marty Supreme and Uncut Gems, the Safdies give us two men writing their own myths.

Marty Mauser and Howard Ratner write themselves into a familiar American fable (especially legible in the Trump era) where striving counts as destiny, confidence stands in for evidence, and hustling becomes its own forward motion.

Marty and Howard live in systems that feel rigged, thinning, or simply uninterested in saving them. So they do what a country on adrenaline does: they keep hitting the gas, even when the road is gone and the idea of finally arriving seems beside the point. They talk big, move fast, and treat each fresh risk as evidence that they’re still somebody.

The ‘80s music from the Reagan era and celebrity cameos bring our reality into the fiction. Kevin Garnett in Uncut Gems brings “impossible is nothing!” that Howard embodies. And Kevin O’Leary and John Catsimatidis show up as real life avatars of the Trump-era: men so sure of themselves they make reality sound like something you can renegotiate.

Maybe that’s the Safdies’ point, too: when our scaffolding no longer holds, the American response is more striving, more self-invention, more “just gotta make it work.” Because “more” is the last tool left on the bench. One more hustle, one more surge, and the world will finally stop wobbling long enough to feel like yours. [inspired from convos with my friends Rithika and Sarah Thankam Mathews]