Chapter 2 of 16 · 5'02"
Boris wakes in the night convinced he is dying and refuses to go back on his medication, insisting he is the only one who sees the world clearly. The argument with Jessica turns into a verdict on their marriage, and it ends with him going out the window.
Boris and Jessica's Marriage Fight
❝ Monologue · 12 lines Life after the divorce
He narrates his own decline flatly, then swerves into social anger without missing a beat.
Late at night, Boris has a panic attack and refuses his medicine, then picks a fight with his wife, Jessica, about their marriage and her past affair. He climbs out the window and falls, and the film jumps ahead to his new life giving chess lessons, which he treats with open contempt.
The chapter introduces Boris as a man who has decided the world is beneath him. His fear of death is real, but he converts it into superiority, insisting he cannot let anything dull his mind because he is "the only one who sees the whole picture for exactly what it is." That conviction is also what makes him impossible to live with, and the marriage argument is less a fight than an audit: "Our marriage hasn't been a garden of roses." When he calls Jessica a Venus flytrap, the joke is cruel, and the film lets it be cruel. The jump out the window is the punchline to the whole outlook, and the later chess scenes show the cost of it: he is clever, and he is alone.
A1–C2 is the CEFR scale. Cards above the level you pick fade, and playback will not auto-pause on them.
“I won't have my mind befuddled by chemicals when I'm the only one who sees the whole picture for exactly what it is.”
He turns refusing his pills into a stand for being the only clear-eyed man alive.
Neutral
“Botanically speaking, you're more of a Venus flytrap.”
After the rose line, calling her a Venus flytrap lands like a quiet slap.
Informal
“Can you believe I hit the canopy? I hit the goddamn canopy.”
He tells a suicide attempt as a gag, and the repetition makes it funnier.
Informal
“More important than how I make my living, is why I bother to live at all.”
It puts how he earns a living beside why he lives at all, and the second wins.
literary
“You know, you should open the Boris Yellnikoff Charm School.”
After Boris insults everyone, calling him charming is pure sarcasm.
Informal
Meanwhile, I divorced Jessica, moved downtown and gave up. I eke out a meager living teaching chess to incompetent zombies. Checkmate, you little patzer. Hey! He's only eight years old, Mr. Yellnikoff. You're supposed to be teaching him... He'll be an incompetent idiot at 58. More important than how I make my living, is why I bother to live at all. Nights, I have trouble sleeping and hang out on Mott Street, trying to explain to cretins that while a black man got into the White House he still can't get a cab in New York. Almost 100 years after the abolition of slavery, a man couldn't play a game of baseball in the big leagues if his skin color was black.
Up next · 03get on my feetThe scene: Boris Takes Melodie InHe believes the medication would dull his mind, and he cannot accept that because he thinks he is the only person who sees the world as it really is.
He is in the middle of a panic attack and an argument at the same time. He climbs out and falls onto a canopy, which leaves him with a permanent limp.
He says he married her for the wrong reasons, they had an affair between them, and he is impossible to live with. He describes the marriage as no garden of roses.
With open contempt. He calls them zombies and patzers, and he empties a chessboard over one boy's head, claiming it was an object lesson.
