I’ve always been in awe of open water swimming. My lifetime of swimming has mostly been confined to chlorine, not salt. (I spent 40+ years in the ocean but that was close to shore with a surfboard underneath.) My Dad introduced me to swimming at a young age and I’ve never stopped. We went lap swimming together for the rest of his life. It was our thing. His strokes were slow and steady, perfect for long-distance swimming. In his late 20s he attempted to swim from Long Beach to Catalina Island (about 27 miles). The currents halted his progress about halfway through the channel, a hurdle to success well documented in Nyad. He would have loved this film.
Annette Bening stars as marathon swimmer Diana Nyad. After setting endurance swimming records in the 1970s, and then 30 years as a sports journalist, she became obsessed at 60 years old with trying again to complete the Havana to Key West swim. (She was forced to quit during her first attempt in 1978 because the tides and winds pushed her off-course to Texas.) Her best friend, Bonnie Stoll (Jodie Foster), drops out of her own life to help Diana achieve her goal. Rhys Ifans (The Amazing Spider-Man) is the crusty navigator, one of many key team members necessary for such an endeavor. Directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin bring another triumph of the human spirit to the big screen in their first narrative feature film after a trio of highly acclaimed adventure documentaries: Meru, The Rescue, and the must-see Free Solo (Post-Olympics Letdown? Try Rowing and Climbing)
Let’s get this out of the way…Diana Nyad is an asshole. She’s selfish and insufferable. Bonnie puts it mildly to her, “your superiority complex is really screwed up you know that.” Bonnie knew what she was in for as coach/trainer, but why did the rest of the support crew keep volunteering to come back? Box jellyfish, sharks, wind, currents, exhaustion, and delirium derailed her multiple attempts. It took four tries and four years to accomplish the feat! The crew’s motivation is never explained, but Diana kept telling them they were part of something big. Indeed, the logistics and equipment of the expedition are fascinating, from the smothering mask for protection against jellyfish, to the electronic shark repellent on the support kayaks (she committed to the open water and not a shark cage as she used in 1978), to getting food and water to her (no human contact is allowed), and the constant monitoring of the weather and currents.
The leading ladies demand your attention, and their friendship defines the film. Foster displays Bonnie’s calm wisdom counterbalancing Nyad’s narcissism embodied by Bening. These are two glorious actresses in their 60s – tenacious, sun-bleached, and ripped. Both trained hard, especially Bening, who spent a year practicing in the water so she could perform all her own swimming scenes. Diana may have been extremely demanding of her crew, but she was even harder on herself. Maybe that’s why they all came back year after year. Nyad is an inspiring, emotional film even though we all know the outcome. It’s nerve wracking when she reaches the Florida shoreline and begins to walk the last few steps, stumbling along on the shallow bottom. Bonnie is waiting along with throngs of people pushing in to welcome her. No one can touch her until she has both feet on dry sand.
D² Rating ◼◼◼◩☐
Trivia: In Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, Annette Bening starred as which Hollywood actress best known for her film noir roles in the 1940s and ’50s?
Trivia: Jodie Foster won her two Academy Awards for Best Actress in which two films?
Swimmers, please see below for a must-read little book.
Trivia Answers: Gloria Grahame and The Silence of the Lambs and The Accused.
Why We Swim by Bonnie Tsui (2020):
I touched on my connection with swimming in the intro. I never swam daily or even three times a week. But a conservative ballpark estimate for me of once a week for 40 years equals 72,000 25-yard lengths of the pool. Why do I swim? Outdoor exercise is clearly a big part of it, but there’s something more going on. Being immersed in the water is a transcendental experience. Ask any swimmer if they’ve ever lost count of what lap they’re on for proof that the mind wanders in mysterious ways while swimming. Diana Nyad had a running playlist in her thoughts timed to the rhythm of her strokes to help pass the grueling hours in the sea.
Why We Swim is a song of praise to the lure of the water and our relationship with it. Swimming is spotlighted in various forms around the world: surviving a shipwreck in Iceland, a San Francisco Bay club, a Baghdad team, samurais, and the Olympics. It’s part memoir, part history, and part psychology. “Bonnie Tsui combines fascinating reporting about some of the world’s most remarkable swimmers with delightful meditations about what it means for us naked apes to leap in the water for no apparent reason. You won’t regret diving in.” (Carl Zimmer, New York Times)