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.