TELLURIDE – The life of Diana Nyad is the sort of true story that’s absolutely ripe for a movie biopic. A record-setting distance swimmer in her 20s, she retired at the age of 30 to pursue a career in sports journalism. A little over thirty years later, she got the itch to challenge herself again and decided to attempt something no man or woman had ever pulled off: a grueling open-water swim from Cuba to Florida. That journey is depicted in Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s narrative film debut, “Nyad.” Annette Bening portrays the outspoken public figure with gusto, but it’s Jodie Foster, as Nyad’s friend and coach Bonnie Stoll, who might be the film’s real star.
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The movie essentially begins as Nyad celebrates her 60th birthday. Stoll, and no, she’s not Diane’s girlfriend (they tried dating at one point but didn’t click), throws a surprise party where we witness Nyad’s awkward attempt to connect with another woman who might just have a mild crush on her (she fails miserably). The milestone of hitting 60 gnaws at Nyad, though, and spurs her to jump back into a pool for the first time in decades. She plans to push back against society’s assumptions about her new age but has to see if she can even come close to long-distance swimming again. Once that’s secretly accomplished, she approaches Stoll about being her coach for the Florida Straight swim. Stoll, who was a competitive racquetball player, knows nothing about swimming. She immediately declines until she gets sucked in by her best friend’s passion. And despite the odds, they start working to make Nyad’s dream a reality.
The film does a fine job explaining the difficulty of what Nyad is trying to achieve. Her 1979 attempt to swim the 110 miles between the two countries found the swimmer confined in a shark-proof cage. Unfortunately, that setup contributed to her swimming miles off-course. Nyad has no interest in being in a cage again, and her research leads her to Luke Tipple (Luke Cosgrove), a shark expert who has devised “shark shied technology” that emits an electrical field to deter the sharks. Stoll, much to Nyad’s initial skepticism, recruits John Bartlett (Rhys Ifans), a Key West sea captain who is an expert on currents in the Florida Straits and takes over as the team’s navigator. Eventually, Jon Rose (Garland Scott) comes on board as the team medic, and Dr. Angel Yanagihara (Jenna Yi), a box jellyfish expert, devises a suit for Nyad to wear to protect her from the sea creatures’ deadly stings.
History tells us there were 25 or so people on Nyad’s crew, but the Hollywood treatment has visibly reduced that to a significantly smaller team. It’s not the first biopic this year that will play with history, and it won’t be the last. And that’s not the only important fact the film glosses over, but you can discover that for yourself after a quick Wikipedia search.
The directing team of Vasarhelyi and Chin are known for the Oscar-winning “Free Solo,” a documentary about a rock climber who attempts the first free-solo climb of El Capitan, a vertical rock formation in Yosemite National Park. They are, therefore, well-versed in chronicling inspirational real-life achievements. Despite an incredible ending, they have their hands full with writer Julia Fox’s adaptation of Nyad’s 2016 autobiographical novel, “Find A Way.” The screenplay is pretty straightforward, almost to a fault. Trying to break the constraints of the genre, Vasarhelyi and Chin include a ton of real footage from Nyad’s life, her swims (including all the Cuba to Key West ones), and many, many news reports. Sometimes, it effectively substantiates Nyad’s importance in sports history and distracts from the drama between Bening and Foster on screen.
The duo also use flashbacks to chronicle Nyad’s sexual abuse from her high school swimming coach, an allegation she and other members of that particular swim team have made since at least the 80s. At one point, the filmmakers cut to an archive video of Nyad discussing it on a popular daytime talk show. These scenes mainly occur when she’s spending hours in the ocean swimming. The soap-ish visual treatment of these scenes is one of Vasarhelyi and Chin’s worst creative decisions and diminishes their impact. The pair also use CG to recreate the hallucinations Nyad will begin to experience after hours in the water. Let’s say some of the visualizations are more successful than others.
“Nyad” often looks fantastic when Nyad battles the sea but disappointingly flat when chronicling her story on land. It’s head-scratching since the cinematographer is Claudio Miranda of “Life of Pi” and “Top Gun: Maverick” fame. Vasarhelyi and Chin have better luck collaborating with composer Alexandre Desplat, yet another memorable score, and editor Christopher Tellefsen, who does his best to make their mixing of natural and dramatic footage work.
It goes without saying the movie – you knew it was coming – sinks or swims on the performances of its lead actors. Bening perfectly conveys Nyad’s passion and makes her swims believable. Then again, the Nyad in this film is an admittedly tricky personality. She’s naturally combative, a bit narcissistic, and expects almost too much from the people around her. The movie also leaves Bening’s character to explain why she’s this way rather than to show it. Nyad has had to fight skeptics and misogyny her whole life. But she needs to fall from grace to realize she can better treat the people who believe in her.
After several failed attempts across the straight, Stoll decides she can’t coach Nyad anymore after her reckless disregard for the lives of the people on her team. The movie attempts to make Nyad more sympathetic after this moment by showing her floundering at a paid speaking engagement. It’s barely an arc for the character, but Bening at least tries to give it some resonance. She’s also quite moving in the film’s final scene, which is almost an exact recreation of the end of Nyad’s last journey (a choice by Vasarhelyi and Chin that pays off).
The surprise of “Nyad,” though, is Foster. You’ll be hard-pressed to remember the last time she played a role with such charismatic energy. That’s partially due to Stoll’s everyday demeanor (she’s an absolute “character”), but Foster is often beaming throughout the picture like a spotlight of pure optimism. Foster is so good you’re often rooting for Stoll to succeed more than Nyad. And sometimes a performance like that is all you need for a feel-good story like this one. [C+]
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