Jesse Eisenber’s Latest Act as a Leading Man Challenges Conventional Notions of Masculinity
Writer/director Riley Stearn’s The Art of Self-Defense opens in hilarious fashion, with Casey Davies (Jesse Eisenberg) getting eviscerated by a pair of French tourists stopping for food at a nondescript diner somewhere in what is probably a flyover state. In a conversation that they think Eisenberg can’t understand, the tourists mercilessly mock Eisnberg between themselves and in so doing, shred any confidence he might have had to bits. Although they are wrong in assuming he can’t understand French — as we learn with a cringe as the camera cuts to an auditory learning tape in his car — their mockery wasn’t far off.
As we learn, Casey is a sad-sack, loner accountant who struggles to hold a conversation at work and doesn’t socialize outside of it. At home, he spends time with his daschund and checks his answering machine only to find messages from his boss inviting him to barbeques at his place. One night, he realizes that he’s ran out of dog food and walks to the store to buy some. On his way home with the dog food in tow, he is accosted by a biker gang who mercilessly beat him for no apparent reason.
After taking some time to recover from his injuries, Casey struggles stepping out at night in fear of getting assaulted again. Thinking a gun might quell his trauma, Casey takes half-hearted steps to file the necessary paperwork to buy a handgun in a hilarious interaction with the gun store clerk. Though in a late change of heart, he instead opts to join the local karate dojo.
From the moment we’re introduced to the tightly wound, barrel-chested Sensei (Alessandro Nivola), we’re aware that something is amiss. The teachings and general culture of his dojo defy what one would normally expect from a neighbourhood karate joint and quickly, we start to wonder why that is.
Sensei shoves a hyper-masculine doctrine down the throats of the vulnerable who come to his classes. His doctrine is one that eschews weakness for steely strength whenever possible. He offers the lonely men who seek his guidance a simplistic remedy to quell their anxieties. Many aspects of his dogmatic approach — such as his insistence that Casey only listen to metal music and that he give up his daschund for a more macho German Shepherd — are vaguely reminiscent of the simplistic approach Jordan Peterson offers in his problematic 12 Rules For Life. This book is noted to have “empowered” men who find themselves at the margins of society.
Casey, who had been out to sea in the aftermath of his assault, finds mooring in the physical exertion and tenuous brotherhood offered to him in the dojo. His quick progression to yellow belt lifts his spirits, as does his invitation to join the fabled night class where the aggression can fly unchecked at the encouragement of Sensei.
If the sinister feeling cast by the dojo didn’t already foreshadow it, one would have been shocked to learn that Casey was originally assaulted by his night class peers. While the events preceding Casey’s discovery are wry and darkly comic, I was left wanting more from the screenplay in the end. Having done so well to get us to the climax, one wonders why Stearn didn’t make more of his ending, especially with talented actors like Eisenberg and Nivola at his disposal. Still, there is a small degree of comfort in the reversal of Casey’s fortunes at the end.
The comparisons to David Fincher’s Fight Club will be hard to shirk for Stearn’s The Art of Self-Defense. It doesn’t hit as deeply as Fincher’s Chuck Palahniuk adaptation, nor will it be as widely seen, but that doesn’t mean that Stearn’s absurdist take on toxic masculinity isn’t valuable or worth seeing. Stearn’s first feature length since his 2014 debut and very public dissolution of marriage puts his directorial maturity on show that viewers will do well to watch grow further. Other than that, it’s a great watch if you enjoy morbid, deadpan humour.