Borg vs McEnroe

Dir: Janus Metz Pedersen

2017

****

The only sports I like watching are Snooker and Darts. I’ve never found Tennis to be that exciting, I like playing it but I find it boring to watch, with perhaps only Golf being less entertaining. However, I can appreciate a match/game full of excitement, determination and pure fight – the famous Borg vs McEnroe 1980 final at Wimbledon being such an event. All I knew about either player before watching were that, apart from both being good at Tennis, Borg was a Swedish sex-symbol and McEnroe shouted at umpires a lot. I really have nothing against Tennis itself, I just can’t stand people who like Tennis – and living fairly close to Wimbledon, I have to say I generally hate the two weeks that everyone suddenly obsesses about the sport. I digress. How entertaining could a film about two Tennis players and a match that happened nearly forty years ago be? Well, thanks to a great scripts, a great director and two very impressive performances, the answer is ‘very’. Borg and McEnroe were always compared to each other as being complete opposites but as Ronnie Sandahl’s brilliant script explains, this assumption couldn’t have been any further from the truth. The only difference between the two players was how they showed their emotion and how they both tuned their focus. There is clearly far more to Tennis than I first thought and I soon found myself engrossed in its world. Seeing the origins of Borg’s childhood was fascinating, we certainly see more of his and less of McEnroe’s (Borg is also thanked in the end credits while McEnroe is not – which might suggest only one of them was enthusiastic about the film) but McEnroes behaviour is explained well and both men are depicted (and defended) equally. The big match is of course the climax of the film, and it is extremely exciting, but it certainly isn’t the important aspect of the film. Indeed, by the end it really does feel like both men win. The visual direction of the film is stunning. From the view of Borg’s Monnaco apartment to the aerial view of Wimbledon’s centre court, the film is a rich tapestry that gets the era and the mood balanced in total harmony. The attention to detail is perfect, with only one scene failing whereby Borg is seen supposedly jogging in London, when it is clear he is more likely in Prague or Sweden. However, that is only a slight mistake, the rest looks as if it were filmed there and then. Sverrir Gudnason is the spitting image of Bjorn Borg and Shia LaBeouf’s performance is possibly his best to date. Ronnie Sandahl wanted Gudnason for the part early on in the development of the film but purely because he looked the part. However, Gudnason spent six months in which he trained fifteen hours a week, with two hours of tennis and four workouts with a personal trainer. He didn’t meet Borg before filming but that seems to be quite normal these days and I understand why. However, Borg’s real son Leo portrays him from the age nine to thirteen. Shia LaBeouf contacted the production team when he first heard of the script. He made his case by stating that he identified strongly with McEnroe and felt he was a misunderstood person, much like himself. He admitted to crying when he first read the script and also said how much he loved and respected McEnroe as a person but he also didn’t meet the player he portrayed before shooting. Two very different actors with two very different styles portraying two very different players with two very different styles and it works perfectly. Gudnason and LaBeouf are both incredible. I’m unfamiliar with Gudnason’s previous work but I’m sure this will rocket him into the limelight and maybe, at last, LaBeouf will be taken seriously. He’s a great actor, misunderstood and overlooked. It’s a very different kind of sports film, a little bit like Rush but far more about the players, their mindset and also about how sports people are portrayed – this particular match going some ways in changing it. A real pleasant surprise for this non-Tennis fan.