‘Nyad’ Review: Annette Bening and Jodie Foster Are Superb in a Moving Tribute to Marathon Swimmer

Filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin held the first screening of their Oscar-winning documentary, Free Solo, in Telluride five years ago. So it seems appropriate that their first narrative feature, Nyad, also has its world premiere at Telluride this year. Free Solo followed the determination of an obsessed mountain climber, and Nyad also investigates an obsessive athlete: marathon swimmer and journalist Diana Nyad, who resolved to swim from Cuba to Florida, a 110-mile journey, when she was over 60 years old.

The film has already stirred a measure of controversy, with some other athletes and sports commentators critical of some of the exaggerations that Nyad had trumpeted during the course of her long career. But it is to the credit of the filmmakers that even though they want to celebrate Nyad’s achievements, they do not shy away from dramatizing her selfishness and combative personality. And even people who may have mixed feelings about the real Diana Nyad will be mesmerized by the fierce and fearless performance of Annette Bening in the title role.

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Bening has always been a performer who shunned vanity, and here she is willing to highlight Nyad’s single-mindedness and arrogance. The key relationships in the movie are Diana’s friendship with her coach, Bonnie Stoll (Jodie Foster), and with John Bartlett (Rhys Ifans), the ship captain who navigated her failed as well as her successful swims. Nyad risks alienating both of these allies with her character flaws. It is a tribute to Bening’s performance that she keeps us mesmerized by Nyad even at her most stubbornly pigheaded.

After all, the theme is a universal one — the attempt to defy age and prove that there is no expiration date for daunting ambition. The film, written by Julia Cox, begins at Diana’s 60th birthday party, in a scene that acknowledges the swimmer’s lesbianism without making an issue of it. From this early moment, the friendship between Diana and Bonnie is dramatized with affection but without sentimentality. Diana’s single-mindedness puts a strain on the bond more than once, but the two women’s devotion to each other turns out to be very moving.

Foster has not had many meaty roles in recent years, and her astringent, deeply felt performance makes us realize what we have been missing. There is no vanity in either of these actresses’ work here. Bening convinces us of Nyad’s drive along with her ruthlessness, which makes Foster’s loyalty to her all the more stirring. In a strong female-driven movie, it is also worth acknowledging the contribution of Ifans, who has had a long career but gives perhaps his finest performance as the sensible, hard-nosed ship’s captain who decides to join Nyad on her final attempt to cross the ocean, even though he is ill. (Bartlett died in 2013, after Nyad’s successful swim.)

There are some flaws in the storytelling. Late in the movie, Diana speaks about being abused by her swim coach when she was a young teenager. But if the filmmakers wanted to zero in on this issue, they should have introduced it much more lucidly earlier in the film. It plays almost as an afterthought here, an obligatory nod to the sexual abuse that many athletes have faced. Perhaps this element needed to be included, but it isn’t handled as deftly as most of the other material in the film.

On the other hand, the cinematography by Claudio Miranda (an Oscar winner for Life of Pi) brings the swimming scenes to vivid life. The ocean scenes were shot mainly in the Dominican Republic and are always alluring and sometimes suspenseful, with sharks and jellyfish threatening Diana’s journey.

In their first narrative feature, directors Vasarhelyi and Chin demonstrate the same command of cinematic storytelling that enlivened their documentaries (which include The Rescue and Wild Life in addition to Free Solo). Perhaps the script could have benefited from a slightly darker edge, but as an enveloping sensual experience and as an acting showcase, Nyad scores.