By Annette Bening delivers a powerhouse performance as real-life endurance swimmer and open water record-breaker Diana Nyad in Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s inspirational sports biopic. The film marks the filmmaking duo’s first attempt at drama having previously made the riveting documentary Free Solo which followed daredevil climber Alex Honnold as he tried to scale El Capitan without the aid of ropes in 2017. The film won the 2019 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Inspired by another extraordinary feat of human courage, endurance and adventure, Nyad is based on the swimmer’s autobiography and dramatises her efforts to do the unthinkable: to swim from Cuba to the Florida Keys without a shark cage. Never before accomplished by a woman, the feat is even more challenging given Diana had previously tried and failed to do it while in her late 20s. Now she’s sixty-four years old and determined to add one of the few sporting goals she’s yet to accomplish to her glittering list of achievements.
Co-starring Jodie Foster in the role of Diana’s close friend and coach Bonnie Stoll (looking uncannily like the real-life woman herself), she combines with Bening to provide appropriate Hollywood gravitas to the incredible against-all-odds exploits of the pioneering women. Rhys Ifans, better known for making the most of his Welsh accent, is also very convincing as the American navigator John Bartlett.
It’s up to Foster and Ifans to communicate to the audience, and make sense of, the technical challenges, both nautical and athletic, facing Diana as she’s understandably spending much of the film silently performing front crawl. This injects an added layer of drama behind the film’s example of human endurance and endeavour. Fittingly, as documentary makers, the directors let the swimming do the talking, however. From the seemingly subtle obstacles of getting Diana to take on board food and water without touching her support boat, to protecting her from shark attacks.
Perhaps ill-advisably Vasarhelyi and Chin do use a dreamy, ethereal aesthetic at times in order to display the swimmer’s mental state which feels somewhat disconnected and unfocused. It’s there to offer us a glimpse into the effects of open water endurance swimming (lack of food, exhaustion, exposure to the elements) and its impact on the mind but saps the momentum. And it’s stylistically a step too far. Flashbacks to Diana’s early life as a teenage protégé are also messily handled.
Nyad is at its best when its eyes are on the here and now. Bonnie Stoll’s determination to keep Diana alive and the tough decisions she has to make, John Bartlett’s ever-present anxieties about the swimmer’s speed and the impact of sea currents, and the security team’s watchful eye over the water to check on any shark presence. Then there’s Diana herself. A woman who is not about to let age get in the way of her dreams, who isn’t going to allow one setback to determine her fate, and who remains steadfast in her fearless determination despite the odds continuing to stack up against her.
The film might sometimes get bogged down in its dramatisation of Diana Nyad’s open water record attempt, an indication of its filmmakers’ fledgling careers outside sports documentary perhaps, but for the most part is a compelling, surprising and inspirational story of gutsy human endeavour and pushing your limits. It’s also about daring to dream. And never giving up.
DIRECTED BY: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin
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