The setting of Puzzle’s opening frames can easily be mistaken for the past: a housewife vacuums an old-fashioned living room, dim in the curtain-filtered sunlight, and hangs colored balloons and a chain of letters spelling HAPPY BIRTHDAY. It could be 1950, but as the party begins, the contemporary hair and clothes bring the scene into the present. Agnes (Kelly Macdonald) is the birthday girl as well as the housewife, and she is serving the cake and doing the work as family and friends enjoy her happy day.
Although Agnes appears entirely content in the traditional housewife role, the pensive new age piano music signifies that something is missing. Absentmindedly, she begins to assemble one of her gifts, a puzzle whose pieces—significantly—form a map of the world. Sitting outside and gazing at the crescent moon in the morning sky, she begins to glimpse another world beyond her house and the narrow streets of a blue-collar New York suburb.
Puzzle becomes a fable of escape—or return? Agnes’ sheltered life is centered on a working-class husband who loves her even if he takes her subservience for granted, two decent college-age sons finding their footing in life, and a benign if not entirely fulfilling Roman Catholic parish. Responding to an ad for a “puzzle partner,” she ventures for the first time since—what, before 9/11?—to Manhattan and stares gap-mouthed at the celestial ceiling of Grand Central Station. The universe beckons! Her partner turns out to be the wealthy, flamboyantly eccentric Robert (Irrfan Khan), who draws her into—who knew?—the subculture of competitive jigsaw puzzling.
They are an odd couple—the diffident and apologetic Agnes and the lordly and cynical Robert. She is scarcely aware of the world beyond her street and he is glued to reports of every faraway catastrophe. For Robert, puzzles offer a glimmer of meaning in a random universe; they grant him power to order chaos into a transitory picture of reality. For Agnes, it’s more about sharpening her innate intelligence and engaging faculties that had gone slack from disuse. Before long, she gains self-confidence and begins to challenge her husband. And yes, Agnes and Robert fall in love.
In Puzzle’s early scenes, Agnes veers close to a caricature of a pre-1970 housewife transposed somehow to 2018. Why is she such a servant? After all, her husband isn’t abusing her, her sons are undemanding and her priest isn’t commanding her to be subservient. As the story progresses, Puzzle presents her more believably and engagingly as a woman searching for and finding her voice while gaining awareness. Robert is a splash of color, a plot device, while the real story is shouldered by Agnes and her family. Husband Louie (David Denman) is clueless but affable, narrow but not close-minded, and his anger, confusion and pain are palpable. Their youngest son, Gabe (Austin Abrams), is brash and raises eyebrows by bringing his vegan Buddhist girlfriend to dinner. Eldest son Ziggy (Bubba Weiler) is sulky but determined, braving dad’s disapproval for wanting to become a chef, not a car mechanic.
In the end, Puzzle asks a question it cannot answer: Is it possible to have everything we want in a world where taking one road means abandoning the other?
