Directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, Nyad is a biopic about swimmer Diana Nyad’s multiple attempts from the early 2010s to swim from Cuba to Florida. Her unfulfilled dream since 1978 which she aspires to fulfill when she turns sixty.
The film explicates the adversities Diana undergoes on her path to achieve her dreams. Comebacks are never easy and in Nyad’s case, her indomitable spirit was subjected to the dubiousness of public. Nonetheless she appoints her best friend Bonnie Stoll as her coach to train her, hires navigator John Bartlett to accompany her on her swim when she relocates to Key West.
Starting from 2010 to 2012, Diana with her team attempted thrice to swim the straits of Florida but she fails each time, sometimes it’s the box jellyfish and at other times it’s the bad weather. She falls prey to nature’s wildest entity i.e. sea. For an instance Diana’s journey feels like a battle between mankind and nature where nature is always invincible leaving mankind helpless but for her giving up is never an option.
The film also throws light on Diana’s obsessive quest to chase her dreams, where she becomes selfish enough to disregard the camaraderie her team offered to her at every step. After her last failure in 2012 when everyone in her team including her best friend decides to give up on this venture, since they have all grown weary of chasing something which seems practically impossible to accomplish.
Diana initially despises them especially Bonnie when she exposes her cynical nature during a heated argument between them, however gradually Diana realizes that sometimes company is more important than destination. She thereby makes amends for her mistakes. In this way, the film humanises it’s main character.
The vivid swimming sequences in the film takes us along with Diana on a roller-coaster ride down her memory lane which has traces of childhood trauma and we get to know that she was a victim of broken home and childhood abuse at the hands of her swimming coach, Jack Nelson.
The recurrence of these memories everytime she swam and failed shows how her failure is deeply rooted in her failure to defend herself in the past, the resurfacing of these memories infuses inside her the zeal to pursue her dream more strongly, which is probably the last gateway to relieve herself from the heavy burden of her tainted past.
The theme of magic realism which is evident in Nyad’s hallucinatory visions of the Taj Mahal, yellow brick from The Wizard of Oz, is pretty undeveloped and becomes questionable at times. However the intercuts depicting the real life Diana swimming is something really fascinating.
Nonetheless the screenplay by Julia Cox is extremely weak and seems unnecessarily dragged because it is fixated on the triumph of Nyad which is not something unknown to the world. The screenplay in a way takes a toll on the direction as well which is decent and not something extraordinary. One hundred and twenty minutes therefore feels too long for a narrative which could have been easily winded up in eighty or maximum ninty minutes.
The film could have delved deeper into the psyche of a sports person like Nyad and the reasons which motivates them to follow their passion insanely but rather it focuses more on the challenges beset on the path to achieve her goal and therefore becomes repetitive after a certain point of time.
Though the film is flawed in many aspects, Annette Bening and Jodie Foster’s brilliant performances somehow saves it. On our bad days when we feel like the whole world is against us, Nyad is a good watch restoring our inner-faith to unflinchingly pursue our passion because it’s never too late to accomplish our dreams once we start believing in ourselves and value our worth.
It’s an inspiring sports biopic but then lacks thematic development, the film could have worked better if it explicated on the character arc of Diana. It’s partly emotionally captivating especially in the end when Nyad like a water nymph at the age of sixty four makes it to the shore of Key West swimming 110 miles, but then it’s not something that will be etched in our hearts for a long time.