Nyad
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M, 120 minutes
4 stars
While a film about a long-distance swimmer wasn't a subject that you might expect to hold your interest over the course of a feature-length movie, it's a fair bet that a documentary about a rock climber wasn't either, until Free Solo appeared a short while ago. The documentary about a young man's attempt to become the first to climb El Capitan alone and without safety ropes was so compelling.
So, it's welcome news that this film about Diana Nyad, the first woman to swim from Cuba to the US, is made by Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, the same collaborating directors who filmed Alex Honnold as he made his way up the 2300-metre rockface in Yosemite National Park.
A riveting survival documentary about the incredible Thai cave rescue is also their work. Nyad, with a smart and sometimes wryly funny screenplay by Julia Cox, is their first fiction feature.
Ten years ago, American journalist and motivational speaker Nyad's fifth attempt at swimming from Havana, Cuba to Key West, Florida, a distance of 177 kilometres, was successful. She was 64 years old when she finally completed the 53-hour swim that she had first attempted when she was 28. Her book, titled Find A Way, carries the message, as does this film, that anything is possible. That beyond the necessary level of strength and endurance, a marathon swim is a classic case of mind over matter. So it helped Nyad enormously that she had a fantastic back catalogue of pop music hits in her head, including Janis Joplin, Neil Young and Simon & Garfunkel, to recall.
Were it a race, Nyad would have had to do work on her dive. As it seems she liked to start off by plunging into the water feet first, rather than flexing her body into a racing dive, she wasn't going to see off the opposition with a dash to the finish line.
In Nyad, an in-form Annette Bening shows her range as someone a little less than engaging and lovable. The equally in-form Jodie Foster plays her best friend and coach, Bonnie Stoll.
Seeing them on screen together is great, especially when we don't see enough of either of these two, now in their 60s. As local expert, navigator and "chronic defeatist" John Bartlett, Rhys Ifans brings his usual Welsh charm.
Learning that her eccentric, hard-driven friend is back in the pool and training for an open-water record shocks Bonnie at first, before she comes round.
As they quote the words of the American poet Mary Oliver, the tone does tip into sentimental territory, but the characters played by Bening and Foster counter this with their worldliness and astringent humour.
Why would Diana decide to again attempt a swim that she failed at 35 years prior? Why not try speed dating, or psychotherapy, or something?
Doesn't she remember the deadly jellyfish, the man-eating sharks, the narrow window for success in treacherous ocean currents, or that it is going to take one quarter of a million swim strokes to cover the distance?
No, Diana is unmoved, and in early scenes gives hints of the obsessive personality type that comes to the fore as she tries again and again, dragging her team along with her.
Flashbacks to her young self show the family background that contributed to the way she is, and that the surname Nyad is the Greek word for water spirit. It was, however, the name of her adoptive father anyway.
That Nyad's swim, done without a cage but with shark deterrent and head-to-toe stretch fabric and latex, is still awaiting official certification does detract from the triumph but the film doesn't go there.
Controversy over the facts in biopics seems to have become par for the course anyway, especially close to awards season.
Her profile as a gay athlete is also lightly brushed over.
Yet this is a fascinating portrait of a fiercely determined and committed woman, and likely pain-in-the-butt, who had incredible focus and out-of-the-ordinary capacity for physical endurance.
A portrait achieved with a respectful curiosity, it is a tribute to the unusual, questing personalities who try things that most people wouldn't dream of.
