Riley Stearns
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Stearns's second feature mines similar territory to David Fincher's brooding classic, Fight Club (1999).
His style touches on both the comic absurdity of a Coen Brothers movie and the graphic, giddy violence of Fight Club, but the tone shifts often feel queasy, as if Stearns wants to critique these things but revel in them too.
If films like In Bruges, Dr. Strangelove, Fight Club, and The Favourite are your type of comedy, then The Art of Self-Defense is not only a must-see, it’s an easy contender for the best film of the year so far.
El arte de defenderse (The Art of Self-Defense, 2018), segundo largometraje de ficción de Riley Stearns (Faults, 2014), invita a las comparaciones con Fight Club (Dir.
A caricature of toxic masculinity that watches like a navelgazing, mumblecore Fight Club, Self-Defense uses zero subtlety as aesthetic affectation.
Twenty years ago, Fight Club presented a satirical look at the male psyche and our obsession with consumerism.
Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
Directed by Jared Hess
influenced The Art of Self-Defense (2019)
Themes Visuals Characters
The Art of Self Defense, which also premiered at this year’s SXSW, is a darkly quirky film (think Napoleon Dynamite meets The Lobster).
The Art of Self-Defense jokingly plays out like the Rex Kwon Do scenes in Napoleon Dynamite.
Stearns mostly films this in a flat, affectless style that recalls Napoleon Dynamite .
If Cobra Kai was surprisingly nuanced (an ’80s bully discovers introspection) and Shaft was a little reactionary (’70s sex machine teaches his millennial son how to fuck), The Art of Self-Defense is the arch, arthouse take on the genre that lands somewhere between Wes Anderson and Napoleon Dynamite .
To dismiss The Art of Self-Defense as Napoleon Dynamite for psychopaths is both reductive and somehow strangely appropriate at the same time.
Sort of like Bruce Lee’s “Be like water, my friend,” except that he’s more like the buffoon-sensei extraordinaire in “Napoleon Dynamite”—Rex Kwan Do. “Kick with your hands and punch with your feet,” says sensei.
The Lobster (2015)
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
influenced The Art of Self-Defense (2019), Dual (2022)
Themes Visuals
The Art of Self Defense, which also premiered at this year’s SXSW, is a darkly quirky film (think Napoleon Dynamite meets The Lobster).
No Retreat, No Surrender by way of The Lobster, The Art of Self-Defense and its lightly dystopic dojo might be the year's strangest genre mashup.
Similar to Yorgos Lanthimos (particularly in the vein of Dogtooth and The Lobster ), there is a brilliant minimalist aesthetic that extends to not the physical style of the movie, but also to the way that relationships exist between characters.
Fight Club by way of Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster), Riley Stearns’ screed on “might is right” toxic masculinity is a giggly black comedy that cowers down a twisty-turny rabbit hole.
It brings to mind the monotone yet naturalistic style offered up in Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster or The Killing of a Sacred Deer .
My first thought was that it’s like a cross of “The Lobster” and “Kick-Ass,” a dour existentialist parable mixed with a goofy martial arts flick.
Dogtooth (2009)
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
influenced Dual (2022), The Art of Self-Defense (2019)
Themes Visuals
Dual exists somewhere in the cross section between a Yorgos Lanthimos movie (specifically Dogtooth or The Killing of a Sacred Deer) and an episode of Black Mirror.
Similar to Yorgos Lanthimos (particularly in the vein of Dogtooth and The Lobster ), there is a brilliant minimalist aesthetic that extends to not the physical style of the movie, but also to the way that relationships exist between characters.
The Foot Fist Way (2008)
Directed by Jody Hill
influenced The Art of Self-Defense (2019)
Themes Plot
Director Jody Hill’s feature debut, The Foot Fist Way (2006), took another approach to this martial-arts-as-codpiece conceit, leaning into the sad-sack cringe comedy of a hapless schlub throbbing with unjustified self-confidence.
In case it’s not clear, that big picture tone is “pitch-black comedy,” and it’s the general depiction of humanity and expressed philosophy that the film invites comparison to movies like Jody Hill’s The Foot Fist Way and Observe And Report.
This eccentric dark comedy is like "Fight Club" mixed with "The Foot Fist Way." It's delivered in a droll style wherein the characters' dialogue sounds like they're reading an instruction manual, and it sneaks up on viewers by eventually morphing itself into a compelling thriller.
It’s hard to extract much real satire from a movie that sometimes feels like Stearns self-consciously attempting push an amalgam of The Foot Fist Way and the “Rex Kwon Do” scenes in Napoleon Dynamite into more overtly malevolent territory.
The Karate Kid (1984)
Directed by John G. Avildsen
influenced The Art of Self-Defense (2019)
Characters Themes Plot
There, he's mesmerized by a charismatic Sensei (Alessandro Nivola) who preaches an ultra-violent karate philosophy to his obedient gang of alpha-males-in-training. He's reminiscent of the evil sensei from The Karate Kid , only he's less likely to "sweep the leg" than just snap it like a twig.
“Fight Club” meets “The Karate Kid” in the dark, savage, and absurd satire of toxic masculinity, “The Art of Self-Defense.”
Among other accomplishments, Riley Stearns's The Art of Self-Defense ends the 30-year reign of Cobra Kai, from The Karate Kid, as the most evil and sadistic karate dojo in the history of cinema.
You see this in films like The Karate Kid and even Sidekicks , but those films are different than this one because they have patient, responsible teachers who do not abuse their power.
Writer-director Riley Stearns' SXSW breakout hit The Art of Self-Defense is a bit like someone tried to imagine what might've happened if, in The Karate Kid, Daniel LaRusso had decided to study at Cobra Kai after all.
But if this fable begins life as a twisted take on “The Karate Kid,” it quickly morphs into a cautionary tale in the vein of “ Fight Club .”
Dual exists somewhere in the cross section between a Yorgos Lanthimos movie (specifically Dogtooth or The Killing of a Sacred Deer) and an episode of Black Mirror.
Tonally and thematically, Stearns seems to be chasing the likes of Office Space and Fight Club , or the kinds of films popular in dorm rooms and message boards alike.
Because the latter contains elements of the former, along with some of the social commentary and revenge fantasy of Office Space and Falling Down.
Bingo! “The Art of Self-Defense” may be presented as an absurdist satire, but like the best American comedies — from the workplace ennui of “Office Space” to the competitive one-upmanship of “Talladega Nights” — it doubles as a keen critique of our national character.
It begins as a droll comedy in the same vein as Office Space and gradually becomes increasingly dark and unpredictable once Casey takes karate classes.
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
influenced The Art of Self-Defense (2019)
Themes
Beyond examining the question, this satire flays it wide open, exposing a netherworld at the karate studio that invites comparisons to Fight Club and Full Metal Jacket, with a shot of modern urgency.
This strange tactic underscores the basic challenges of human interaction while emphasizing the intricate power games between so-called alpha and beta personalities (as psychological mind games go, it’s a subtler take on the agonizing first act of “Full Metal Jacket”).
Casey is born-again hard, but with nice flashes of master Vincent D’Onofrio in “Full Metal Jacket.”
This seems to cure Casey of his stated intimidation of men turning him into a dark creature with a note of Nicolas Ray’s Bigger Than Life .
However, it’s Hill’s wildly divisive, “psychotic mall cop” comedy Observe and Report (2009) that feels closer kin to TAOSD, at least in terms of its acidic, machismo-skewering ambitions.
In case it’s not clear, that big picture tone is “pitch-black comedy,” and it’s the general depiction of humanity and expressed philosophy that the film invites comparison to movies like Jody Hill’s The Foot Fist Way and Observe And Report.
In the Company of Men (1997)
Directed by Neil LaBute
influenced The Art of Self-Defense (2019)
Themes
That is a period where films like In the Company of Men and even Fight Club question traditional ideas of masculinity, so The Art of Self Defense continues in that tradition.
Satires can paper over facile social criticisms with sheer, giddy nastiness and a high laugh-to-minute ratio; see, for example, the Coens’ vicious farce Burn After Reading (2008), which openly admits that it has no moral.
The set-up feels ripe for something of a comedic “Revenge of the Nerds” payback scheme, but “Self Defense,” directed by Riley Stearns (“Faults”) veers off into areas as shocking and black as such recent needle-in-your-eye edgy fare as “Midsommar” and “Under the Silver Lake.”
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)
Directed by Edgar Wright
influenced The Art of Self-Defense (2019)
Characters
They were funny (looking and quick with dark quips) men of inaction (unless they were being used ironically, like Cera in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World or Eisenberg in Zombieland) and both were blessed/cursed with a look of geeky intelligence that lent them the ability to see the world’s inherent faults rather than having any actual esoteric knowledge.
Within its walls, a modest cadre of students train under the cucumber-cool eye of the Sensei (Disobedience’s Alessandro Nivola), a man who no one would ever characterize as a cuck.
Because the latter contains elements of the former, along with some of the social commentary and revenge fantasy of Office Space and Falling Down.
If films like In Bruges , Dr. Strangelove , Fight Club , and The Favourite are your type of comedy, then The Art of Self-Defense is not only a must-see, it’s an easy contender for the best film of the year so far.
Like The Art of Self-Defense , Stearns relishes in stagnant framing and minimizes camera movement in conveying a very specific worldview.
Like Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You (2018) and the commonplace nature of its prison system-like WorryFree job/housing program and the stardom that awaits participants in its fictional I Got the Shit Kicked Out of Me game show, both of which were treated as regular aspects of everyday life, the clones and their acceptance into the world are treated by this film as equally common.