Borges and Me: Inspirational beauty and melancholy

4 stars  

Who wouldn’t want to spend a week driving around the Highlands, all expenses paid, with a renowned writer? Jay Parini, it seems, a young American aspiring poet unexpectedly thrown into chauffeuring the Argentinian “father of magical realism”, Jorge Luis Borges. Parini’s mini adventure was immortalised in 2020 in Borges and Me: An Encounter, a novelised memoir that has now been adapted for the screen by Marc Turtletaub.  

The colourful story takes place in the early 70s, where Parini (Fionn Whitehead) is a grief-stricken but focused PhD student in St Andrews. He arrives to meet with a potential supervisor Alastair Reid, an established poet and translator himself. Reid is smoothly portrayed by Alan Cumming, with a welcome cheeky comment on the university’s poshness when he asks Parini, ‘St Andrews make you wear that?’ Parini’s blank, scared look is the perfect premise for the film – throw an idealistic, inexperienced, perfectionist academic/writer in a bag with three mentors who don’t care much for societal structures, shake hard, and see what happens.  

What happens is that Parini’s carefully laid out plans go awry. He’s set on meeting the poet George Mackay Brown (yet another big name – how many mentors can one guy get?) to interview him as part of his PhD. Before he can achieve that Reid, who needs to urgently leave for London, asks him to take care of Borges, who at this point is blind and in his seventies. Parini, I imagine for the sake of the film’s flow, isn’t too happy with the task, still blissfully unaware of the honour this is. Borges convinces Parini to drive him through the Highlands on his way to meet with Mackay Brown and to be his eyes.  

Whether the real Parini or film Parini couldn’t appreciate the privilege of this unwelcome situation at the time, there is something almost absent in Fionn Whitehead’s performance of the young student. Haunted by the guilt of convincing his brother to enlist for the Vietnam war and dealing with posthumous tapes, his non-existent energy could be explained if it didn’t suddenly appear in his excitement at meeting the young woman Eilidh (Freya Mavor) or his stubborn, blind obsession in meeting the Scottish poet while ignoring the golden opportunity that now has us gathering in cinemas.

Maybe it’s the academic rigour that keeps Parini constrained from properly stepping foot in the world he so wants to join. It’s a world where the old is fresh, the grey hair unburdened by ambition and race, and is instead sweetly filled with hash brownies and otherworldly imaginations. Luis Gnecco as Borges seems to be having the most fun, finding beauty, magic, and freedom in every little thing and with all the absurdity that entails. Surrounded by Highland views swirling outside the window, you quickly start to wonder how you’d describe this force of nature to the man who so perfectly grasps at the beauty of life while maintaining a healthy distance to it.

There is a slow descent into a more sombre part of the film after the much-anticipated meeting with Mackay Brown. Peter Mullan shows up with a perfectly distanced and a little offish presence as the poet set to disappoint the hopeful Parini. Parini expects answers and awkwardly tries to force a formula on something that can’t be boxed in. The plot seems to go a little off the trail from there with a somewhat unnatural romantic angle and a Culloden scene, each feeling like a mismatched puzzle piece being forced into a jigsaw.

There is so much beauty and melancholy in this film. It might not only encourage viewers to reach for Borges’ work and get lost in his abstract worlds, but also to look at life in general and realise how easy it might be to make it just a little bit more magical. Even I, ready to complain about life not being this way anymore, was inspired to hear Mavor talk during the Q&A about having a real-life mentor in Parini. I thought about my own dear writer friend hidden away in Haddington, always ready to spend the most wondrous day exploring odd places or discussing writing at his big kitchen table. Who knows: maybe one day our seemingly ordinary story will inspire intergenerational friendship and openness to creativity. These are the kind of stories that should never stop being shared. 

Borges and Me received its world premiere at Edinburgh International Film Festival, with the final screening on Tuesday 18th August.

Borges and Me