Saturday Night with Nyad

It’s Saturday night in the big city, and what are three slightly sick, still recovering from the lurgy, fit feminists to do?

Why, how about watch NYAD, and write a short and snappy group review it for the blog?

Sam

What I loved

The soundtrack is great. And given that these are the songs Diana Nyad sang to herself while swimming for hours and hours, they had better be good. 

I totally got caught up in the drama,  the “will she make it?” of it all even though I knew the answer.  Given how boring hours and hours of swimming can be,  I think they did a pretty good job making that gripping.

What I didn’t like so much

Diana Nyad herself is extremely annoying and there’s just no getting around that. 

Swim training is only so exciting to watch.

Overall 

I’m turning 60 this year and while I’m tempted by the idea of various athletic challenges,  Nyad has persuaded me that long distance ocean swimming won’t be it.  Lol. 

I learned a lot.  I’ve never thought about seasickness while swimming and I thought box jellyfish were purely an Australian problem. 

Sarah

What I loved

The film seemed to be reasonably faithful to Nyad’s life, personality and experience. While the dialogue was a little wooden at times I felt the actors did a good job portraying complex real-life characters. 

The film started a little slowly but overall I felt the directors did a good job maintaining interest and pacing despite the marathon, repetitive nature of the subject matter. Their experience in documentary filmmaking shone through in their effective use of archival footage and they managed to keep us on the edge of our seats even though we know how everything turns out in the end.

I enjoyed learning more about Nyad’s years-long journey to her record-setting swim, and the team that surrounded and supported her. 

What I didn’t like so much

There were definitely a few scenes and bits of dialogue that came off a little stilted, and it sometimes felt like they weren’t sure if the film was a documentary, a relationship drama, or an adventure movie. I was charmed but unmoved by the animated hallucination sequences.

While I understand why they kept the on-water team to a single boat for dramatic effect, it was weird not to represent the larger team and flotilla of boats that followed Nyad from Cuba to Florida.

The film sometimes loses its way when trying to capture Nyad’s abrasive personality and single-minded focus on her goal. The result appeared to imply a certain level of neurodivergence, or at least obsession with her “destiny”, underlies Nyad’s efforts, rather than highlighting her as a driven athlete who focused on achieving and stay in peak condition for weeks at a time waiting for the right conditions required for a successful swim, and the cost to both herself and the team around her.

Overall

Overall this was an entertaining and inspiring movie, warts and all. Definitely worth checking out, albeit with a content warning for the vivid and repeated portrayals of several traumatic events in Nyad’s history.

Catherine

What I loved

There was a total transformation into characters by some well-known actors. I loved that it was done by, uh, just acting– not prosthetics, heavy makeup, or body padding.Their skill was sufficient. I no longer saw Jodie Foster or Annette Bening or Rhys Ifans; I saw these personages, all caught up in this quixotic enterprise spearheaded by Diana Nyad.I believed it and was also caught up in the drama, despite the fact that I already knew how it ended. 

The filmmakers and writers were very creative and clever, which they had to be in order to make several attempts at a 100-mile swim (spoiler: she swam 110 miles) seem compelling. They used special effects to play out several colorful hallucination experiences Diana had during long hours in deep water. I enjoyed the ways they depicted them and how Bening as Nyad reacted to her watery delusions. 

What I didn’t like so much

Even though I really enjoyed the characters as built by the actors, sometimes it seemed like they were trying to act like old people– crotchety, stubborn, single-mindedly irrational. However, those moments were fleeting.  

Overall 

I came away from this film about Nyad’s stupendous athletic achievement feeling impressed by her focus and ability to tolerate pain in order to reach this goal. But I also feel like the completion of this goal doesn’t at all relate to more ordinary physical goals or programs we non-professionals take on, fail at, complete, or make progress toward. It took hundreds of thousands of dollars, a team of many dedicated people, and a lot of time– resources that almost none of us have. 

I don’t see her as an athletic role model; I see her as an extraordinary and unusual athlete with a very special set of skills and unusual personality. That said, this film is really worth seeing. I got to see inside the mindset and pressures of one world-class athlete who did at 64 what no one had done. 

Did you watch it? What did you think?