If masculinity was “in crisis” when Fight Club came out, then it’s full on DEFCON 1 now. How are all these men coping with their inherent demise? The Art of Self Defense approximates what their “war” must look and feel like. Cruel, brutal, and funny in only the best ways a dark comedy can be, The Art of Self Defense plunges you into the minds of alpha males. You better fall in line, or else…
If you wanna take a beta male and making him evolve into an alpha male, there’s no better starting place than Jesse Eisenberg (well, maybe Michael Cera). He plays Casey, a meek mannered accountant at a non descript company. One night he gets mugged by a biker gang, unable to defend himself. Feeling scared and helpless, he seeks ways to feel powerful (a gun, obviously), eventually landing on a karate class taught by Sensei (Alessandro Nivola). No name…just, Sensei. Casey finds power in Sensei’s teachings, as well as being impressed by near black belt Anna’s (Imogen Poots) skills, and pushes himself deeper and deeper into the dojo’s psyche and philosophy.
To make this easy for simple minded alpha males, The Art of Self Defense’s screenplay is a bullet to the head of toxic masculinity. Writer director Riley Stearns and Jesse Eisenberg take the audience on the funny but wholly uncomfortable journey Casey goes on. Eisenberg was always going to be good at playing meek and beta, as his film career has taught us. But Stearn’s sceenplay and Eisenberg’s acting show us the clear path toward the toxicity. First comes fear and/or depression. Then comes a thirst for power, which springs confidence….which creates a greater thirst for power. And so the cycle goes. Casey’s actions build little by little, pushed forward by people he perceives to be holding power, like Sensei and Anna. Casey’s arc is funny for sure: watching him stupidly use his new powers outside of the dojo is pretty hysterical….but then at some point it simply isn’t. The darkness slowly creeps into Casey, so by the end we totally buy his transformation from sweet, scared boy to terrifying, self-important alpha, successfully mastering a technique only the Sensei’s master utilized before the master was brutally murdered by a shell from shotgun by a misinformed hunter on a hike.
Don’t let Riley Stearns’s dark screenplay scare you into thinking this movie isn’t a comedy. Jokes are everywhere in this movie, biting and frequently hilarious. I’m pretty sure Stearns was watching this when he wrote his runner about belts; that running joke gets funnier every time it comes up. His best bits are when Sensei (a superb Alessandro Nivola by the way) breaks from his karate centric philosophy to deliver one last practical line. Like “This is your belt. It is yours. It is sacred….there is a $15 charge if you need to replace your belt.” Even the power of the dojo cannot overcome capitalism I guess. The monotone controlled voice of Sensei and Casey lets them drop in truly horrible lines that become automatically funny because of how assumed and casual that thought is in this world. Undercurrents of homosexuality permeate the screenplay, like how only men can truly give good backrubs as part of the naked cooldown. However, as expected, true homosexuality is frowned upon in this male centric world, as sex is part of a female’s purpose…along with cooking and child rearing (one of Sensei’s dropped in lines…while everyone mindlessly nods along).
Riley Stearns pulls no punches with The Art of Self Defense. While I am eager to see what he does next, I’m equally impressed with the 3 leads: Alessandro Nivola, Imogen Poots, and especially Jesse Eisenberg. Don’t know what Stearns saw in them for these roles, as they are the opposite of who they have been in the movies, but all 3 add more texture to their acting resumes with this movie, and give me hope for more fun, brave acting choices in the future, especially Eisenberg as a toxically masculine Mark Zuckerberg infiltrating Cambridge Analytica and taking down the company with his karate skills…