The second installment in our Countdown to the Oscars series features another queer actor nominated for a queer role: Jodie Foster in her magnificent performance as Bonnie Stoll in Nyad, which earned her a Best Supporting Actress nod in a film where zero lesbians die. Annette Bening is nominated for Best Actress for her incredible portrayal of Diana Nyad, but Bening is not a lesbian—we just all collectively wish that were that case.
Nyad tells the true story of an almost unbelievable athletic triumph. At age 60, after taking a 30-year hiatus from swimming, Nyad decides to pursue her wildest dream: to swim over 100 miles from Cuba to Florida—more than 50 hours straight—without a cage to protect her from sharks, a feat she tried and failed at age 28. The film follows her truly deranged quest through harrowing misses until she finally succeeds, with the help of her best friend and a team of dedicated experts, at age 64.
When I sat down to watch this film, I struggled to imagine how swimming could possibly be portrayed in an exciting fashion. I was expecting to grit my teeth through a tedious Oscar-bait snoozefest. You know, like Oppenheimer. Reader, I was on the edge of my seat. Julia Cox’s beautiful script about aging, female friendship, and persevering against all odds should have been nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. Cox managed to write a deeply narcissistic character who we all somehow still want to root for. Also overlooked for a nom are the film’s directors, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, documentarians whose first narrative feature shows genuine vision. This is what I mean when I say a biopic should not be better served as a documentary. The irony!
I find it interesting that the best biopic of the year is not nominated for Best Picture. I wonder why that is? They nominated a couple of middling to bad biopics that were created by men centering male subjects. They nominated a film about a female doll. They did not, for some reason, nominate this stunning biopic (written by a woman and directed by a team that includes a woman) about the first person, a real human woman, to swim unassisted (click here to read Time Magazine’s coverage of the controversy surrounding that claim) from Cuba to Florida. What could it be? I simply cannot guess.
Call me crazy, but there’s something about being able to see the full range of motion of the faces of these brilliant actresses. Bening and Foster are at the top of their respective games and, though they are unlikely to win, their performances complicate the validity of the concept of “best.” I can only imagine how difficult it must be to complete a film that takes places mostly in the water, and to excel under those circumstances is astounding. Everyone in the film is wonderful and perfectly cast, and I imagine we would have had a contender if Best Achievement in Casting had made it to this year’s docket.
Nyad is the kind of movie I can imagine myself settling in for repeat viewings while flipping through TV channels. Equal parts entertaining and poignant, Nyad deserves all the praise it’s receiving and more. Watch it in select theaters or on Netflix.
