Art Critique

I recently saw the new movie The Art of Self-Defense. It's a quirky, dark satire starring Jesse Eisenberg, Alessandro Nivola, and Imogen Poots. When mild and meek Casey is mugged and beaten one night, he decides to enroll in a martial arts class. The Sensei of the class comes on supportive and kind at first, but is gradually revealed to be an intense figure with extreme and particular views. Casey soon finds his entire identity being re-molded by the man.

I've heard comparisons between this movie and Fight Club -- which is a pretty fair jumping off point. Both present critical looks inside a cult of personality, and both are aware of the taint of toxic masculinity. But where Fight Club plays it so straight that a section of its audience actually didn't realize it was against those things, The Art of Self-Defense is more overtly comedic. It's a dry comedy in which every character takes every moment seriously, but the behavior and the dialogue are plainly meant to be funny to the audience. It's even more dark than it is dry, though, so while many lines really are laugh out loud funny, you might occasionally find yourself a bit too embarrassed to laugh out loud.

The casting really is perfect. The main character Casey is the exact kind of milquetoast that no one (outside maybe Miacheal Cera) plays better than Jesse Eisenberg. Alessandro Nivola infuses the Sensei with a great underbelly of menace and danger, but then covers that up with just enough kindness and reasonableness that you can believe people falling under his spell. Imogen Poots is the determined Anna, masking a sea of emotions behind a hardened exterior that occasionally cracks and leaks. (It would be nice if the movie used her more, though it's a particular point of the story that it doesn't. At least her moments really make a mark.)

All three actors are wonderful at the played-completely-straight comedy of the film. And writer-director Riley Stearns fills out the rest of the movie with people who capture that same quality. Some of the best laughs comes from minor characters who breeze in, drop some wickedly sharp truth, and then are never seen again. An early scene in which Casey goes to by a gun is so direct and apt that it's almost more sad than funny; either way, it's a highlight. The movie even manages to generate laughs when simply (and repeatedly) showing a photo of a "character" we never even meet.

Yet while I found it a fairly astute joke engine, I also found The Art of Self-Defense to be fairly predictable. It's a lean script for a short movie, and all the big developments are telegraphed well in advance. Indeed, the story arc is so out in the open that I can scarcely imagine that Riley Stearns thought he was hiding any "twists" -- so perhaps the predictability isn't a weakness but a strength: however wacky this world, it's always playing fair with the audience.

The film seems to be a bit more "art house" than I might have expected; it doesn't seem to be playing widely in that many venues. But I expect those who go to the trouble of seeking it out are the sort of people who would enjoy seeing it. I give The Art of Self-Defense a B+.