Nyad: A Reminder That The Ocean Is Terrifying, Y’all!

Nyad, starring Annette Benning as Diana Nyad, is the story of the real-life marathon swimmer’s attempts to swim from Cuba to Florida throughout her life. The movie documents five attempts in total, first in 1978 at the age of 28, with the remaining four attempts taking place after the swimmer turned 60. The film is based on Diana Nyad’s memoir titled Find A Way: The Inspiring Story of One Woman’s Pursuit of a Lifelong Dream. 

The narrative of Nyad is your average rudimentary sports-focused film where the main character is struggling to overcome a physical hurdle keeping them from greatness. Done before so many times, there was a very real possibility here for this one to assume a been there, done that kind of vibe. However, the performances of Annette Benning and her co-star Jodie Foster (who plays the role of her coach) elevated the story impressively and brought the Nyad film out of the doldrums and into greatness. 

Diana Nyad is portrayed as somewhat of a narcissist who is too self-involved to find a girlfriend and settle down. In her twenties, she chased her marathon swimming career, and then after her first failed attempt at swimming from Cuba to Florida, she got out of the ocean and never got back in. 

She focussed on a sports casting career then, never straying too far from competitive spaces. Then her sixties rolled around and Nyad is suddenly faced with her impending mortality. Suddenly she wants to do hard things again and finds herself back in the water. 

But that’s the thing about these superhuman things though, isn’t it? It takes someone a little too self-involved to even think they can pull off something like swimming a hundred or so miles through treacherous ocean water without any protection at all.  That, and a faithful and devoted support team. 

And Diana Nyad definitely had that. If Diana is the center of the film, Bonnie is the heart and soul of the whole thing. When the film opens, she’s just Diana’s lifelong best friend, but when Diana decides to try the ocean swim again, she asks Bonnie to step in and assume the role of her coach. Jodie Foster is incandescent as Bonnie, and frankly, is the reason we kept watching so fervently. 

Despite being an incredible accomplishment, the real-life Diana Nyad’s successful crossing of the stretch of water between Cuba and Florida was never formally ratified or recognized by the World Of Open Water Swimming Association (WOWSA), or the Guinness Book of World Records. WOWSA published a report in 2023 detailing their reasons for this, but essentially, they said that Nyad and her team didn’t adhere to the rules. 

When the report came out, Nyad told the Los Angeles Times that her team wasn’t informed about the process involved. “And maybe I had too much hubris, like, ‘I don’t need to prove this to anybody.’ That’s my bad. But it wasn’t to obfuscate the rules. We were never told, ‘You’ve got to do this or you won’t be ratified.’

Upon the completion of her swim, some doubt was also cast over the validity of the results. Her team released Nyad’s GPS data after she got out of the water, and some folks raised issues with the speed at which she moved at the beginning and the end of her swim, as well as the time in which she was able to complete the whole thing. Nyad vehemently denies all the cheating allegations.

While the Nyad film doesn’t touch on this aspect of the real Diana’s story, they do emphasize rules throughout the narrative. There are several points throughout the film where Diana needs help in the water. Each time someone jumps in to tend to her, Nyad vehemently emphasizes the notion that no one can touch her in any way at all, not even as she’s emerging from the water on the shores of Key West stumbling on her feet and clearly suffering from delirium. 

Co-directors Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi said they looked into the accusations before embarking on this journey and found no truth in the allegations, and therefore, chose not to include them in the film. 

At the end of the day, Diana Nyad’s most formidable opponent throughout this story is the unpredictability and the ferocity of the ocean. There’s a reason why so few people have accomplished this swim, y’all–it’s dangerous! Diana swam without a shark cage and had to fend off predatory sharks using other technologies. She did encounter sharks along the way that definitely seemed interested in taking a bite, so thankfully for her the repellent technology her team used was effective. 

Box jellyfish and the ferocity of the currents proved to be her biggest adversary though. After several near-fatal attacks from box jellyfish, Diana ended up needing a protective wetsuit and face mask when passing through that part of the ocean. If she was stung just one more time, the way the venom in those creatures works, she would have died. The ocean is positively terrifying y’all, and this film captures this essence of this well. 

While there is no romance in Nyad, Diana’s character in the film is a lesbian, as is the real-life version of Diana too. Although Nyad isn’t so much a queer story, we’re in the business of elevating queer people and queer adjacent storytelling. So if you’re coming to Nyad thinking you’re going to watch a gay love story about a woman doing great things, you might want to readjust your expectations a little. 

Despite this, Nyad is a surprising narrative of perseverance, friendship, and an examination of what really makes humans great. The camaraderie and chemistry between Annette Benning and Jodie Foster is palpable in Nyad, and is a reason in itself to watch this film. 

---

Nyad is available to stream on Netflix globally. Follow us on X and Instagram for all queer stuff!

Featured Image: Courtesy of Netflix