Helga without the H

Every year* I attempt (with varying degrees of success and effort) to watch as many of that year’s Oscar nominees as possible. For the past few years* I’ve posted reviews of these movies here on this blog. At some point before the awards ceremony, I usually write up some sort of over-analysis and maybe some predictions, but we’ll see if I run out of steam before then. In the meantime, today we cover…

*Except 2022, when I was too burned out from 2021’s binge to give a crap.

Nyad

[2 nominations for best actress (Annette Benning) and best supporting actress (Jodie Foster)]

IS IT SALTBURN?: The performances are. The movie is not.

Like my last review (Rustin), this is another film nominated for acting awards, but nothing else. These two movies were actually very similar in a ton of other ways. They are both biopics. In both cases, the protagonist had a long interesting life, but the movie is built primarily around their single greatest achievement and build-up to getting there. Both protagonists are older at the time of the film (Rustin was in his 50’s, Nyad was in her 60’s) which features into the plot (Rustin is the old guard who meets and inspires the new guard, whereas Nyad is trying to achieve athletic greatness decades after most people’s athletic abilities have dropped off.) Both are gay, but while this fact is mentioned in both movies (and is a major plot point in Rustin), it is not at all the central point of the movie. Both films are perfectly adequate as films, but not best-picture contenders. And both films center around absolutely fantastic performances that 100% deserve their acting nominations.

There is a LOT to love about this movie. It’s not the filmmaking itself, but the story it is choosing to tell, and the fact that Hollywood decided to make it in the first place. Nyad is about super-badass older woman who decides to re-engage her decades-old dream of being the first person in history to swim from Cuba to Florida. It’s no secret that Hollywood has a history of not offering many good roles for women. And it’s also no secret that these few juicy roles basically dry up and disappear for older women once they’ve passed their Last Fuckable Day. So here comes a movie that not just offers a couple decent roles to older women, but offers them the most badass roles imaginable, playing actual real human beings who are tough as fucking nails. it is inspirational as hell, especially to someone like, say, me- a middle-aged female athlete who has no intention of slowing down any time soon. These woman have fully-formed personalities, unstoppable resolve, and are in freaking amazing shape.

Annette Benning plays the titular role, and I read that she trained her ass off for the part. She swam like hell for I think an entire year before filming began. They’d hired stunt swimmers, and on day 1 they realize that they didn’t need any of them, because Benning’s swimming was flawless. She wasn’t some old lady playing the part of a swimmer; she became an actual legit swimmer. The physicality required from her for this role is just absolutely insane, and she 100% pulled it off.

This film did a crazy good job of explaining to the audience exactly how tough Nyad’s swim was, and why it was so difficult. About 15 years ago I enrolled in swim lessons as an adult so I could learn the proper strokes. I remember one day I was supposed to do 1 or 2 laps of whatever stroke we were learning. I had to stop halfway through for a rest, because- I don’t know if you knew this- swimming is exercise, and it is very, very tiring. I’m impressed by average joes at the local pool who can last more than a couple minutes on the water. After a certain point, it is tough for me to understand the degree of difficulty as distances increase and conditions worsen; it all seems insane. But I can relate to understanding the amount of training, grit, and planning that had to come together for her achievement; I am a novice trail runner who has learned this year how much extra prep needs to go into prepping for a trail Ragnar that isn’t required for a regular jog around the neighborhood. This movie exemplifies that exponential increase in reparation, except in this case it’s turned up to eleven(million).

All that being said, the film is not perfect by any means. Spoiler alert: Nyad doesn’t make it on her first attempt. Or her second. Or her third? I actually lost track of how many attempts she went through. The attempts get tedious and kinda boring. The film does an excellent job capturing how excitement around her attempts drops off more and more over time, but we still have to sit through them as an audience. It’s the sort of frustration that would make many people give up on a goal like this, which makes Nyad’s perseverance all the most remarkable; but that doesn’t make sitting through the film enjoyable. They fill the gaps with flashbacks to Nyad’s early life, including quite a bit of trauma, and from a filmmaking standpoint that helps move the film along- but only to a point. They fill the rest with a seemingly manufactured conflict between Nyad and her best friend and trainer (Jodie Foster’s character, whose name I don’t remember and am too lazy to look up) and the rest of the crew which if course is resolved miraculously just in time for her finally-successful attempt.

Speaking of Foster’s character- we learn virtually nothing about her. She’s supposed to be Nyad’s rock- her best friend who leads the team and get her through everything. But I wish we’d gotten a bit more backstory on who exactly this woman is. What’s her story? How does she have this much time to devote to this stuff? They drop in hints and tidbits here and there, but it’s just too underdeveloped. Foster did a really great job with the role, and the character was a badass in her own right, but the writers could have fleshed her out more.

Final personal note: I watched this movie while doing a stupidly excessive workout- 1,000 box step-ups. I got the best time in my gym, and was doing it at the highest scaling. I couldn’t walk for a week afterwards because my calves were so sore, but that’s unimportant right now. The point is I credit this film for inspiring me to push through and keep fighting. Because stepping up on a box for a few minutes in the comfort of my living room is exactly nothing compared to the woman swimming for several days straight on the screen in front of me. So if anyone out there wants some inspiration to start unapologetically kicking some ass, especially any badass older women, this is the film for you.