The Art of Self-Defense

Directed by Riley Stearns
​Starring: Jessie Eisenberg; Alessandro Nivola; Imogen Poots

We live in very tumultuous times. Our planet is boiling alive, outdated social customs are bubbling back to the surface and thanks to Riley Stearns’ The Art of Self-Defense, Jessie Eisenberg is the face of toxic masculinity. 
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Yes, that is the kind of movie you are in for. Self-Defense is a dark comedy through and through, a genre of television and film that has always existed on the fringes of popularity. Think of the Coen Brother’s Fargo or anything Martin McDonagh has directed, (In Bruges, Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri) movies that have an overall positive critical reception but have never had their deserved time in the commercial spotlight. I can understand why that is, the subject matter of any dark comedy is always a little bit ‘off’. A filmmaker’s goal in this genre is to make you laugh at something you would almost definitely not find funny if confronted with it in the real world. 
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The movie follows Casey, (Eisenberg) a timid loner who is mugged by a gang of motorcyclists and so on his way home from buying a gun, discovers the small karate dojo run by the enigmatic Sensei (Nivola). Casey, as someone who has never exerted an ounce of self- confidence, becomes enamoured with the sport. He begins to dedicate his life to his training and that is when he falls down the dark and depraved rabbit hole of Sensei’s ‘night classes’. What follows is a downright hilarious tale filled with a whole lot of violent weirdness. 

What The Art of Self-Defense gets right with its comedy is the perfect blend of writing and acting. Stearns wrote AND directed the movie and contained within these 104 minutes is his singular vision. The script is filled with language meant to strip away any societal veneers until only the crux of the issue bursts its way to the forefront of the conversation. Eisenberg, Nivola and Poots are tasked to act with little emotion, every joke and odd line delivered without a trace of irony, straight faces delivering lines of dialogue as sincerely as possible. With a script full of characters who speak similarly, the distinctions between them and the comedy stems from the subtle ways each actor deliver their lines. Instead of a bombastic delivery filled with crazy words and strange body movements, the humour comes from a break in a voice on certain words, or a pause to take a deep breath at the wrong moment. As an audience member, you will enjoy this movie even more if you really pay attention to what is being said and how the actors chose to say it. What Stearns’ script does is take away the loquacious nature of a movie script and merely has the characters exclaim their innermost feelings without expressing any embarrassment at how others might react. This is where the true genius of The Art of Self-Defense lies. 

Stearns uses karate and its culture to explore the role masculinity plays in society. Casey is a man who has never stood up for himself, his head seems to be permanently bent down looking at the floor. When he stumbles into Sensei’s world, where discipline and aggression help you to succeed, he pours all his energies into learning what it is to be a ‘real’ man and suddenly things start going his way. Even if you know barely anything about any martial arts, you probably know that every student wears a different coloured belt to signify the competence within the practice. Stearns uses this belt hierarchy as a stand-in for the larger world’s fixation on success, as every student in Sensei’s class yearns for him to bestow them with the next coloured strip of fabric. This leads to one of the best belt related running gags I have ever seen in a movie but it also provides an insightful look into the current state of the world and its people. 

Stearns takes aim at toxic masculinity by stripping his characters dialogue of any societal complexities. The men exclaim their misogyny outright, never mincing their words to cloud what they really mean and yet everyone within the world of the film never reacts with anything but straight acknowledgment. Anna (Poots) is a brown belt in Sensei’s class, clearly his best student, but is consistently denied the black belt because she is a woman. Instead she is forced to teach the children’s classes to stop her utilising her true sporting talents. This is just one example of the obstacles placed in the way of women by men hiding their insecurities, using tradition and history to ensure a continuation of the sexist status quo. 
That’s the thing about traditions though, they were all conceived in the past. If we are to fully evolve as a human race, these outdated rules conceived by men who only wanted to cement their power, whom are all now long dead, must be dissected and changed to suit our current climates. 

In today’s world of ever-evolving gender norms, what it means to be a man is completely different then even ten years ago. The constant barriers put up in front of women to stop them succeeding are not going to be broken down by simply acknowledging them. What The Art of Self-Defense does to further the cause is show audiences the absurdity of the unspoken rules that govern our actions as men and women on planet Earth. As the violence grows and the stakes become more absurd, what will become of a man forced to confront the fact that he is not the centre of his own world? 
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Also, and I cannot stress this enough, this movie is really damn funny! 

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Jeremy Costa

Jeremy Costa is a man that figured out that if he said he wanted to be a film reviewer then technically sitting on the couch all day and watching movies was "an investment in his future." 

​You can hear more of Jeremy's opinions on Don't Expect Anything, the improv-catastrophe podcast you never asked for.