Susan Granger’s review of “Nyad” (Netflix)
Is the name Diana Nyad familiar to you? As embodied by Annette Bening in the new biopic “Nyad,” she’s the long-distance open-water swimmer who retired from her athletic career on her 30th birthday only to decide – at age 60 – to swim 111 miles from Havana, Cuba, to Key West, Florida.
The longest open-ocean swim in history, that murky marathon would take her through turbulent, shark-filled waters, battling swarms of venomous box jellyfish with three-foot tentacles whose stings have been compared with fiery, electric shocks. Her perseverance is awesome.
Filmed by underwater photographer Pete Zuccarini over a period of about two months in 2022, Bening’s performance required her to spend three to eight hours a day in a 233’ x 233’ tank off the coast off the Dominican Republic. Previously, she’d devoted a year to training with former U.S. Olympic swimmer Rada Owen.
Adapted by screenwriter Julia Cox from Nyad’s memoir “Find a Way” and directed by Jimmy Chin & Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, the husband-and-wife team best known for their Oscar-winning rock-climbing documentary “Free Solo” (2018), the film also chronicles the relationship between feisty Nyad and her best-friend/reluctant coach Bonnie Stoll (Jodie Foster).
“I’m not done,” Nyad defiantly insists as they play a ferociously competitive game of ping-pong, “I have more in me.” Besides, her mythic namesakes/ancestors were the nymphs who swam in the lakes, rivers and oceans to protect them for the gods,
Short-tempered, self-centered and tactless, Diana Nyad demanded as much from Stoll and her crew as she did from herself, particularly her navigator (Rhys Ifans).
An obvious Best Actress Oscar-contender, Annette Bening delivers a bravura performance as the cranky, complex competitor. A four-time Academy Award honoree, Bening was previously nominated for “The Grifters,” “American Beauty,” “Being Julia,” and “The Kids Are All Right,”
In the Supporting category, Jodie Foster captures the not only the ambivalence but also the physicality of Nyad’s former lover-now-trainer; it’s also Foster’s first role as an openly gay woman.
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Nyad” is an agonizing, inspirational, exhausting 8, streaming on Netflix.
