Irrfan Khan plays Robert, the reigning singles champion now desiring a teammate for a doubles contest, and Agnes is a perfect fit to his needs. After receiving a 1000 piecer for her birthday and easily and quickly putting it together, Agnes seeks more and happens upon a want ad looking for a partner for a national jigsaw puzzle competition. Thanks mostly to a natural and lived-in performance by Kelly Macdonald, who plays a housewife with a newfound skill for jigsaw puzzles.
LEAST BRAVE CHARACTERS IN MOVIES MOVIE
Yet the movie isn’t as stiff and insipid as it sounds. For Marc Turtletaub’s Puzzle, which is based on the 2009 Argentine film of the same name (translated from the Spanish title Rompecabezas), jigsaw puzzles are as significant as can be, both literally and symbolically, and most of the symbolism is even exposited out loud. And that’s when a film is just featuring a puzzle as a prop, maybe to showcase a character trait if not fully tread into layered text.
Maybe the metaphor is really too on the nose. Surprisingly, jigsaw puzzles haven’t been too prominent in cinema in the more than 75 years since the release of Kane. There the symbolism is anything but subtle, but it’s also not explicitly stated, though there is a line at the end linking those puzzles to the mystery of a man’s life. The most famous use of jigsaw puzzles in a movie is Citizen Kane’s montage of Dorothy Comingore as Susan Alexander miserably passing the time with the hobby. That’s basically the structure of all great drama, only in most instances the picture isn’t the same in the end as when it began. Something is broken up into pieces and then put back together. Jigsaw puzzles offer an obvious metaphor. Macdonald is a perfect fit in this seemingly easygoing drama.
0 kommentar(er)
