Annette Bening Just Keeps Swimming in ‘Nyad.’ But to What End?!

Nyad is based on a true story, but given that Diana Nyad has a well-documented habit of lying about various aspects of her career, “true” is a relative term when it comes to this wannabe-inspirational sports biopic (in theaters Oct. 20 and on Netflix Nov. 3).

Based on its subject’s book—and therefore taking her accomplishments, and version of events, at face value—Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s narrative debut (following docs about incredible daredevil feats such as Free Solo and The Rescue) focuses on the 64-year-old Nyad’s efforts to complete an arduous 110-mile marathon swim from Havana, Cuba, to Key West, Florida. Yet just as there’s no reference to the many falsehoods Diana has apparently told about her past, there’s zero overt mention of the controversy surrounding her signature triumph—thereby proving that the film cares more about rah-rah uplift than thorny inquiry or messy reality.

To be sure, Diana did successfully make her fabled trek, although questions persist to this day about whether she did so without assistance—a suggestion born from the fact that, during the middle hours of her swim, she moved at a pace that would make Michael Phelps envious, and which she and defenders chalked up to favorable ocean currents. Such issues, however, are never raised in Nyad, which merely opts for uncomplicated lionization. Starring Annette Bening as the swimmer, it begins in August 2010 with Diana unhappy about turning 60 (“a bag of bones”) and the attendant sense that, as an athlete, she’s been put out to pasture. “Where’s the excellence?” she laments to her best friend Bonnie Stoll (Jodie Foster), who throws her a birthday party at which Diana—not for the last time—chats only about herself.

A brief non-fiction prologue recaps Diana’s former marathon-swimming achievements and the celebrity that followed. Into her seventh decade, however, Diana—who’s spent years working as a reporter for, among others, ABC’s Wide World of Sports—craves a new challenge. Well, not exactly new; inspired by old videos of herself, she decides to revisit the swim from Cuba to Florida that she first failed to finish at age 28. This strikes Bonnie as madness, as does Diana’s desire to have her serve as her coach. Nonetheless, Diana is a fearsome competitor who never takes no for an answer and, once her mind is set, refuses to quit, and she’s soon training with Bonnie as well as assembling a team that will help her realize her ends, beginning with gravely boat captain John Bartlett (Rhys Ifans).

With their mission set, the crew begins preparations, from figuring out a way for Diana to stay on course (the answer: a glowing cable hung off the side of John’s ship) to accounting for the numerous sea creatures (sharks, stingrays, and man-of-wars, oh my!) that stand in her path. Readying for her first attempt, Diana talks herself up to anyone and everyone who’ll listen, including a group of young children, stating blowhard things like, “I don’t believe in any limitations!” and that she’s made “a contract with my soul” to pull off the journey. Bening inhabits her character fully, by which I mean, she turns her into the most grating narcissist on either side of the equator, and that’s not mitigated by the film’s efforts to cast her “me me me shit” (as Bonnie puts it) as a manifestation of her charming and rousing determination.

Diana’s abrasiveness is slightly offset by Bonnie, a staunch friend who, along with John, suffers the swimmer’s egotism because she believes in her dream and wants to take part in her grand adventure. As Bonnie, Foster radiates the sort of appealing charisma that Diana wishes she boasted, and Nyad lights up whenever she’s barking at Diana about her pain-in-the-assery or encouraging her to soldier onward in the face of obstacles. Fortunately, those moments are frequent, since Diana’s first stab falls short. So too do her second, third, and fourth tries, undone by weather and jellyfish-related headaches that call into question whether she’s up to the task of doing something that no one has ever been done before—or, at least, never done before without swimming in a protective cage, a detail that the film never properly clarifies so it can make her deed sound greater.

Directors Vasarhelyi and Chin love shots that gaze up from the ocean depths at Nyad, silhouetted by the backlighting sun. During her numerous swims, they crosscut to her adolescence with her dad (who taught her that Nyad means “water nymph” in Greek) and her teenage training with a coach who eventually betrayed her trust and sexually assaulted her. Both on their own and with regards to their insertion into the action proper, these flashbacks prove clunky, if no more so than the rest of the cornball drama, full of big speeches, portentous setbacks and feel-good victories. Nyad diligently adheres to biopic conventions, to the point that every one of its ups and downs is painfully predictable. That, as a result, makes the proceedings sluggish; at 120 minutes, the film feels like it goes on as long as Diana’s acclaimed expedition.

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Diana exclaims, “No one’s been able to do it!” and expounds upon her “destiny” while Vasarhelyi and Chin fill their soundtrack with ’60s and ’70s tunes from, among others, Janis Joplin, Simon & Garfunkel, and Neil Young. Ifans grimaces and growls about “windows” of opportunity, Foster frets and reassures her charge, and Diana soldiers onward, convinced that she can make it and, thus, validate her own self-love.

Nyad’s narrative involves Diana learning to appreciate, and give credit to, Bonnie, John, and everyone else on her side (because she can’t do it alone!). Yet that late development feels as contrived as the material’s refusal to reckon with the pricklier aspects of its protagonist. Only in a brief exchange with Bonnie, who chides her for an oft-repeated anecdote’s exaggerations, is any mention made of Diana’s fondness for embellishment; otherwise, she’s portrayed as a straightforward strong-minded athlete who reached her potential and, in the process, pushed past the limits society places on women and older people.

By ignoring the more fascinatingly divisive aspects of her personality, behavior, and achievements, Nyad comes off as an authorized vanity project. Worse, though, is that even on those limited terms, it plays as a one-note heartstring-tugging programmer.

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