NYAD (2023) Review
In the unbelievably tumultuous last few years (I still can’t wrap my head around 2020 being four years ago now), we can all take comfort in Oscar bait still showing up to give the masses something to almost forget about. Granted, it’s been a few years since a film like NYAD has been nominated for more popular categories like Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, rather than awards like Best Original Song (looking at you Four Good Days (2020)). With all that being said, seldom is there a film, especially an Oscar nominated film, that’s caused this kind of alarm as NYAD and I think it’s at least worth writing about.
NYAD is the story of Diana Nyad (Annette Bening) , professional long-distance swimmer and apparent member of the 1979 US Women’s Squash team (not important but mildly interesting) as she continues her many attempts to swim from Cuba to Florida. She recruits her former girlfriend and trainer, Bonnie Stoll (Jodie Foster), and other miscellaneous people to help her progress the freezing temperatures of the water, avoid poisonous jellyfish, deadly man o’ war, and human eating sharks. It should be considered frightening, heroic even, except it’s not true!
Now making films which are retroactively about liars isn’t new. Just last year, both The Blind Side (2009) and Catch Me If You Can (2002) were exposed as not being truthful about their subjects, the former becoming something of a national scandal. But there’s something different about NYAD. I don’t know if I can put my finger on it exactly, but the biggest difference is that everybody knew she lied! In fact, Diana Nyad is such a prominent liar in the swimming community that somebody made a website solely dedicated just to exposing her lies. Of course, it’s easy to jump on the bandwagon and assume, based on this website, that she’s a complete serial liar, but there’s probably some nuance to claims made by both sides. What I think is most important about this entire situation is that the producers, especially Netflix, did very little, if any, research as to the validity of the claims which Nyad made and are trying to win an easy Oscar through two pretty good performances.
Talking about the film itself, it’s nothing amazing. It’s too restrained to show anything meaningful about the human spirit or Nyad herself. We get brief glimpses into her life before her 2011 to 2013 attempts to swim the ~103 miles from Cuba to Florida (why not the other way I wonder), but nothing more than the bare minimum. There’s struggle and the indomitable human spirit, but it’s been done before and so much better. Jodie Foster does a nice job playing Bonnie, who should have been the main character, and Annette Bening plays the often crass Nyad with plenty of passion and vigor. However, the script adds nothing to the already tired genre of biopics and the sub-genre of films about real people overcoming adversity with the intent to inspire others, Race (2016) and Saving Mr. Banks (2013) are two similar examples. Nothing is to be gained or lost while watching NYAD, we are only treated to the recurring elements of fluff.
