Chapter 7 of 23 · 4'32"
Isaac runs into Mary at a charity event and the small talk quickly gets personal. They argue about how to answer a Nazi march, then trade the stories of their marriages. Mary says she was tired of burying her identity under a brilliant man, and Isaac answers with jokes about his own divorce.
Physical Force Is Better With Nazis
You Should Meet Some Stupid People
At a charity benefit, Isaac and Mary meet again, and the conversation moves from his new book and his decision to quit, to a Nazi march in New Jersey, to their divorces. Isaac argues that physical force makes the point better than satire, while Mary explains that she left a brilliant, dominating husband to stop hiding her own identity.
The benefit is the movie's version of a meet-cute, but the talk keeps turning into an argument. Isaac and Mary cannot agree even on how to respond to a Nazi march, and his line, "physical force is better with Nazis," tells you how quickly he turns opinions into fights. The conversation then becomes mutual confession: Mary says she was tired of "submerging my identity to a brilliant, dominating man," and Isaac explains that his ex-wife left him for a woman. Instead of competing, the two of them discover they are both people who talk too much and trust too little. Her verdict on his friends, that he should meet some stupid people and learn something, is the first honest insult of the relationship, and he seems to enjoy it.
A1–C2 is the CEFR scale. Cards above the level you pick fade, and playback will not auto-pause on them.
“You should meet some stupid people. You could learn something.”
It sounds like advice but is a clean jab at the clever people around her.
Informal
“No, physical force is better with Nazis. It's hard to satirise a guy with shiny boots.”
It turns a political argument into a single unforgettable comic image.
Informal
“It's enough to turn you off women and it accounts for the little girl.”
In one breath she ties his humiliation to the teenage girl he is dating.
Informal
“I like the way you express yourself, too. Pithy, yet degenerate.”
Two clashing adjectives make a compliment that is really a jab, and the last word lands it.
Informal
Up next · 08basket caseThe scene: Isaac and Mary Walk by the RiverIsaac wants to answer a Nazi march with bricks and bats, while Mary thinks sharp satire is stronger. It is a small disagreement that reveals how Isaac turns almost any topic into a fight.
She says she was tired of submerging her identity under a brilliant, dominating man. Her complaint is not that he was unkind but that being with him meant disappearing.
He says his ex-wife left him for another woman. He jokes that he took it well under the circumstances and that he once tried to run them both over with a car.
It means exactly right or perfectly on target. Isaac uses it to say that even his worst experience was oddly perfect, which turns the conversation into a joke.
Dennis is one of the people at the benefit, a Harvard-educated man Mary calls aggressive. When Isaac describes a film idea, Dennis calls it homicidal rather than hostile.
