Appreciating "The Art of Self Defense"

For the first twenty or so minutes of the new Riley Stearns film, "The Art of Self Defense," I thought I had the movie's number. Jesse Eisenberg plays Casey, the film's hero, the kind of milquetoast nebbish I'd seen him play in "The Double" and "Zombieland," and so many other films. Casey works an office job and seems fine just staying under the radar and cohabitating with his dachshund. Then Casey is brutally mugged one night, destroying his sense of security and turning his life upside down. He tries to buy a gun for protection, but is delayed. Then he walks into the karate dojo of a man named Sensei (Alessandro Nivola) and things get a lot more interesting.

"The Art of Self Defense," like Stearns' last movie, "Faults," is about cult dynamics and people vying for power over each other. This time around the cult is the karate school controlled by Sensei, who espouses an inviting philosophy of self-betterment that Casey latches on to immediately. Gradually, it's revealed through Casey's interactions with the dojo's lone female student, Anna (Imogen Poots), and his new friend Henry (David Zellner), that Sensei is a power-tripping egomaniac, and his entire schtick is built on toxic masculinity, greed, and lies. "The Art of Self Defense" also reveals itself to be a black comedy, very dry, very deadpan, and with just the right amount of absurdity.

This kind of highly stylized comedy doesn't always work for me. There's often a tendency to overdo the violence or turn the characters into too-obvious caricatures. "Quirky" is a common descriptor. In this film, though everyone speaks a little too formally, and the production design makes the world a touch too drab, there's a realism to the behaviors and relationships of everyone involved that keeps things grounded. I can buy that Anna sticks around in spite of poor treatment, because she's bought into the idea that if she works hard enough that she'll ultimately prevail. And while Sensei seems to wield an inordinate amount of power and influence over his students, the movie also take time to drop those little hints about his ineffectiveness as a business owner, and the depths of his own insecurities.

Moreover, I like the way that the film portrays Casey's journey into the darkness of aggressive hypermasculinity, and his eventual redemption. There's a great sequence where he tries out a new attitude of alpha male dominance, which gets him what he wants, but also makes him look totally ridiculous. Without much overt exposition, the story lets Casey work out the dangers and iniquities of Sensei's worldview on his own, and then empowers him to do something about it, resulting in a very emotionally satisfying narrative. Yes, this is a very familiar type of character for Jesse Eisenberg to be playing, but it's also a good reminder that he's really good in these roles.

Alessandro Nivola, however, stole the movie for me as Sensei. He's so sincere about the nonsense coming out of his mouth, and seems to care so much for Casey's wellbeing at first that you can understand why Casey likes him. His growing hostility initially manifests as extreme pettiness and passive aggressiveness. The film's dialogue is full of people reciting factoids and statistics, occasionally made up, in order to bolster their authority and assert their worldview on others. Sensei does this very often, to the point where he's honed it into an intimidation tactic. When violence enters the equation, it's brutal and deglamorized, and the focus is usually on Sensei's hypocrisy in using it.

There are a lot of films like "The Art of Self Defense" out there, but few that I've been on the same wavelength with to this extent. It's not so much that these characters are familiar to me, but the way they think and the way they express themselves rings so true. I also connected with its humor in a way I typically don't with similar dark comedies, maybe because it takes aim at and employs many of the tactics of popular faux-intellectualism. And it does it so well, I may never be able to keep a straight face during a marketing pitch for martial arts classes again.

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