Directed by: Riley Stearns
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Alessandro Nivola, Imogen Poots, Steve Terada
Casey Davies' dull, plain, almost anonymous life is on full display in the first ten minutes of The Art of Self-Defense. He works as an accountant, and the closest he comes to conversing with anyone is standing idly by a table of three disgruntled workers shooting the breeze about how they would like to beat up their boss. He sheepishly defends the boss, but he is quickly rebuffed and sent on his way. His only friend in the world is his adorable dachshund, and one night Casey (Eisenberg) walks to the local pet store to pick up dog food (the food comes in a brown paper bag simply labeled "Dog Food" on it) and is savagely mugged and beaten to within an inch of his life by motorcycle-riding bullies.
It may be unfair to say the mugging is the highlight of Casey's recent life, but it stirs him into action to defend himself against future beatdowns. He applies for a gun license, and while his background check is being examined, Casey comes across a karate dojo run by the charismatic, quiet, and mysterious Sensei (Nivola). Casey wants to learn karate (or as one class member pronounces "ka-ra-tay") and Sensei is willing to train him. Sensei says Casey reminds him a little of himself, and we kind of, sort of know Sensei is feeding Casey a line of bullshit to convince him to keep coming to class. The dojo is a business, after all.
The Art of Self-Defense is a potently satirical examination of toxic masculinity, which the Sensei engages in plenty of and trains his students to follow suit. Sensei points out that Casey's name is not masculine and his choice of dog is even less so. Casey is soon promoted to yellow belt, which he would like to wear around the clock and finds a creative way to do so. He wears the belt proudly like a Cub Scout would wear his most recent medal for sportsmanship. But Sensei doesn't merely want Casey to be happy as a yellow belt, he pushes him to attend "the night class", where the lessons become more brutal and, in some cases, criminal. Sensei's influence becomes more pronounced in Casey's life, as Casey ditches listening to soft rock for metal and begins to act aggressively towards everyone. He's only a yellow belt, mind you, but he has tapped into a part of himself he has never allowed to be unleashed before, and like a brush fire such aggression can spin easily out of control.
I won't reveal what happens. You suspect things with the Sensei aren't on the level, and you would be both right and wrong. There is a third major player, Anna (Poots), a brown belt who teaches the children's class and will not ever be promoted to black belt because she's a woman, even though her skillset is clearly superior to her male counterparts. This isn't conjecture, Sensei admits it openly as if there is nothing wrong with his misogyny. ("No matter how hard she tries, she will never be a man"). At the end of one night class, when students engage in "cooldowns" in which members massage each other in ways which are borderline homoerotic, Casey is assigned to be massaged by Anna because "her hands are smaller and weaker". .
The final minutes of The Art of Self-Defense are wildly over-the-top, and of course violent. Considering the testosterone flying around, it couldn't really end any other way. Eisenberg successfully manages to make Casey a blank slate who is easy pickings for a classic manipulator like Sensei. That's not an easy thing to do. Poots instills Anna with equal parts kick-ass and compassion within the same person, and the camera loves her in an Emma Stone-like way. She is likely the only voice of sanity within the dojo. Then there's Nivola, who played the rabbi whose wife engages in a relationship with another woman in last year's Disobedience. He doesn't mold his Sensei after the screaming, uber-macho Kreese from the Karate Kid movies, but instead makes him a disquieting authority figure who hides his mean streak behind a façade of calm and reflection. Nivola never raises his voice, and never needs to, and his abuse of his students is subtly unnerving and manipulative. He can carve up people with his words as easily as he could his fists and feet.
It is one of the best supporting performances of the year.
The Art of Self-Defense isn't a comedy, per se, but it is rich in darkly comic undertones. The target of its venom isn't karate, or even guns, but the over-the-top masculinity which can be equally as dangerous as karate or guns. The people in The Art of Self-Defense use karate as a way to release their rage against the world, not as self-defense or even for health and fitness. They measure their self-worth by the color of their belts and have allowed Sensei to take control of them piece by piece, until they are simply mindless robots who have surrendered their sense of self to him. It's sad, repugnant, and also comic and tragic at the same time. In a way, The Art of Self-Defense is a mirror for our times.
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