Nyad

Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 2 hours, 1 minute
Writers: Julia Cox, Diana Nyad
Directors: Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi

Quick Impressions:
I approached this movie reluctantly because I kept seeing promotional images of Annette Benning looking determined in a bathing cap, and that just didn’t grab me.

(Note: I have absolutely nothing against bathing caps, Annette Benning, or looking determined. I’m just a bit depressed right now and struggling to pull myself together, and Nyad appeared to be lacking the sort of salacious razzamatazz that makes movies easy to watch when your brain is doing its Bartleby the Scrivener impression and “would prefer not to” engage with anything.)

But I keep hearing good things. Both Benning and Foster seem to be circling Oscar nominations this year, and who can resist an Oscar hopeful that can be watched from the comfort of the living room sofa while feasting on a week-night baked potato?

“What if we just watched a few minutes of Nyad?” I threw out there while chopping chives because I was having a horrible day. I thought maybe I could make it through the movie in segments.

Then to everyone’s surprise, we found the movie completely captivating, fell in love with the characters, and watched the whole thing.

“Thanks for letting me watch a movie,” I said to my eight-year-old afterwards as we got ready for bed.

“No problem,” he replied. “Actually, to my surprise, I enjoyed the movie.” That truly is shocking. Usually it’s like pulling teeth to get him to watch a movie. He added, “I especially liked Bonnie. She was easy to root for.”

“Oh,” I told him, massively surprised he’d been paying attention. “Well, Bonnie is played by Jodie Foster. She’s a wonderful actress.” Annette Benning is, too. “Have you seen Freaky Friday?”

“No,” he replied.

That kind of threw me because I thought surely he’d have encountered it somehow, whether paying attention or not. But I guess we haven’t watched it in a while. (I mean the 1976 one with Jodie Foster, Barbara Harris, and John Astin.) It blows my mind that he hasn’t seen it. For a while there, my mom and I used to watch it practically every day. (I can still hear mom quoting Barbara Harris, “That rat fink Mary Kay…”) I’ll have to show him that movie.

I think my mom would have liked this movie, too. For some reason, I kept thinking of her the whole time I watched it, possibly because my only awareness of Diana Nyad is filtered through her.

I remember her saying to me once while watching the news, “Oh yeah. This is that woman who tries to swim from Cuba to the United States every year. I wonder if she’ll make it this year.”

The Good:
Both Benning and Foster are fantastic in this film playing truly likeable characters who have great chemistry together. You don’t even have to be interested in swimming or sports to be interested in Nyad. Do you like movies about best friends? What about movies about athletes and coaches who inspire and push them? Movies about older women succeeding in the face of ageism and sexism? Movies about people who face unbelievable adversity but never stop pursuing their goals and finally achieve their dream?

Nyad will tick all of these boxes for you. It has the added plus of being family friendly. (I’m stunned my eight-year-old started paying attention to it and watched the whole thing. He wasn’t in a darkened theater. He has all kinds of distractions available to him at home and usually checks out of movies by listening to an audiobook while drawing or building a level in his game. Nobody even tried to get him to pay attention, but he started watching Nyad on his own.)

Now it is rated PG-13. Is there profanity in it? I have no idea. I never notice things like this, so I just don’t know. There is some sensitive content about sexual abuse, but I don’t think it’s bad for anyone to see that people are hurt when people hurt them (though it could be a trigger). There are also some scary moments when Diana faces death through peril.

Honestly, the “peril at sea” aspect of the movie may be in part what drew my son in. Swimming from Cuba to Florida is a formidable task, and (as Diana says to a group of school-aged children early on) what she’s most worried about on the open ocean is the marine life—sharks, seals, rays, jellyfish. And she ends up having heart-stopping (for the audience and sometimes apparently for her) encounters with sharks and jellyfish. This kind of stuff is pretty riveting to watch.

It’s also strangely satisfying to watch the steadfast friendship between Diana and Bonnie, who have begun to notice that they’re growing old together and have decided to be friends forever. (Imagine if the Golden Girls tried to swim to Cuba. You get the same kind of warm feelings of vicarious friendship here that you do from that show, another rare bit of scripted entertainment that my son likes.)

Of course, it’s also wonderful to see Diana achieve something everyone tells her is impossible through willpower, grit, and training. I do remember (mainly because my mom commented on it) seeing her make these attempts occasionally on the news. But with the distance of a casual observer, I saw her as a headline, not as a human. I had no idea from those snippets of news coverage what a huge personality Nyad has.

I found Benning’s take on the character interesting because her narcissism is quite noticeable, and yet, though she’s undeniably difficult, she’s also eccentric, charming, and loveable. We know for sure she’s loveable (and that we’re not just being drawn in by her charms) because Bonnie loves her.

What makes this take on the character so fascinating is the awareness that the screenplay is adapted from Nyad’s own memoir, so we get the idea that the real woman wants to showcase her seeming self-centeredness and how she occasionally appears to take advantage of and steamroll over Bonnie. That makes all the “selfishness” and “grandiosity” look somewhat different.

Again, children can benefit from the moral of this story as they watch Diana learn that she’s not completing this difficult feat on her own. She’s working with a whole team dedicated to helping facilitate her dream. As the story unfolds, she begins to realize that they’re bringing something to the project she can’t manage on her own. And they also discover that even though they’re making sacrifices for her, there’s a tremendous emotional benefit to them. Plus, she’s the one down there swimming until she begins to hallucinate and brings herself to the brink of death.

“I could never do this,” I realized.

“Of course!” my daughter exclaimed. Amused, she demanded, “Now why in the world on this earth would you assume this is something you’re supposed to be trying to do?”

“I couldn’t swim for twenty-four hours,” my husband said.

“I couldn’t swim for twenty-four minutes,” I declared, not entirely joking. (As I rethink this, I’m sure I could do that if I had to, but I’m very bad at swimming laps because I tend to drift.)

Right now, I’m working on retraining my body not to stay awake round the clock. I thought I was successfully converting to a normal, diurnal schedule by maintaining a consistent wake-up time this past fall, but apparently, you have to maintain a consistent bedtime, too. I’m envious of professional athletes. My brain thrwarts me at every turn.

Diana’s commendably indefatigable. (Imagine if she never completed the swim, though. Then people might be more likely to use words like “stubborn,” “delusional,” “intractable,” “in denial.”) She’s an inspiring figure, and so convincing that even Bonnie struggles to know her limits.

I’ve realized recently that I struggle with knowing my limits. Either I see everything as a limit or I acknowledge no limits at all. This kind of ping-ponging back and forth between extremes will not get you from Cuba to Florida. But I do find Nyad’s refusal to give up on her dreams (despite her own age and external pressure) commendable and inspiring. (There is, however, a nagging little voice inside my head that says, “But perhaps some of us were meant to achieve goals, and others are more like NPCs, not capable of much of anything.) (I’m having thoughts like that because I’m depressed and my brain won’t release the energy I need to focus properly on enacting my own designs.)

Both Foster and Benning are so captivating as their characters. And when you watch the real women in the end credits, you see that they’re also capturing them pretty perfectly. It’s no surprise they’re circling Oscar nominations. Rhys Ifans is also quite compelling as the navigator helping them chart the course most likely to let Diana accomplish her goal.

Best Action Sequence:
So many factors thwart Diana, and almost all of them are out of her control. How can she help it if someone gives her the wrong medication, if deadly marine life attacks her, if there’s a wild storm at sea? I suppose the lesson we can learn from this is that she pragmatically makes corrections after encountering each of these setbacks. One fascinating aspect of this movie is that her own physical training seems like the least complicated aspect of her ability to complete the swim.

I personally love two action sequences, one when she’s swimming in the storm (because there’s a comic element there I can’t resist), and the other when she receives a life-threatening jellyfish sting.

Best Scene Visually:
Claudio Miranda is good at photographing water in interesting ways. My husband loved the way the edges of the flashback sequences look like lapping water. Some of Diana’s hallucinations are hypnotically beautiful, too. But I think I need to watch the film again to pay more attention to its visuals.

Best Scene:
It was the opening of this movie (from the store to the surprise party) that convinced me I would like Nyad. Bonnie and Diana have such a nuanced yet comfortable dynamic, and we see from these early moments that Bonnie truly understands her friend. It’s easy to see why she’d make the perfect coach for Diana.

The Negatives:
What if we can’t swim from Cuba to Florida? Diana Nyad managed it, but she’s clearly (as she frequently insists) a truly remarkable person. Not everyone has that level of raw athletic talent. I am positive most of our bodies (to say nothing of our minds) would let us down before we could achieve such a fantastic goal.

What if we just don’t want to swim from Cuba to Florida? It looks so uncomfortable. If all goes well, you’re guaranteed to hallucinate, have some skin damage, vomit, and be hospitalized at the end. I don’t mean to disparage Nyad’s achievement in any way, but such dramatic behavior might not be for everyone. Probably some would say that her greater achievement is inspiring the unfailing love and loyalty of Bonnie.

I wish the film explored the post-achievement a bit more. It’s so pleasant to watch someone triumph. Then the credits are like a victory lap. But the film might be more interesting if we saw how completing that swim enhanced Diana’s life in a practical way. (Perhaps we do since we see her giving inspirational speeches in the credits.)

What I want to know is this—what advice does Diana have for other women? She appears to want to be a role model for them, an inspiration to them (or was that an act because she needed the endorsements)? If she does, indeed, want to inspire other women, what does she want to inspire them to do? We can’t all swim from Cuba to Florida, and even if we could, some of us wouldn’t want to. Some of us would prefer to take a plane. What about those of us who aren’t strong swimmers? What about those of us whose minds and bodies break down? Are there ever times when completing our dreams really is impossible? Are there dreams that are unrealistic?

But, you know, I’m not sure I’d want the film to veer off in this direction. It’s a pretty manageable length as is, and it’s quite uplifting, too.

Overall:
Nyad was unexpectedly delightful. Jodie Foster and Annette Benning are consistently good actresses, but both are Oscar-worthy here, and I hope they do get Oscar nominations for their work. This is an always engaging, uplifting movie that the entire family can enjoy with its useful meditation on friendship and what it takes to succeed plus its great performances and moments of riveting ocean peril. I’m sure I’ll watch Nyad again.