Back in 2013 Diana Nyad accomplished something no other long-distance swimmer had even tried. She swam from Cuba to the U.S, without a shark cage. It was her fifth attempt to negotiate the 110 miles with its manifest risk of sharks and deadly jellyfish.   She was 64 years old.  

Annette Bening’s portrayal of Nyad in the 2023 movie is a tour de force  in capturing her determination and willingness to put herself through the kind of challenge not available to most mortals.

And yet, for all the inspiration her mythic accomplishment offers up, there was an aspect I found sobering, even dispiriting, at witnessing what she was a willing to endure. At the end of the movie, there’s a clip of the real Nyad on the Ellen DeGeneres show in which she says, with all the pride of a woman who pushed herself to the brink of her power and beyond: “It just shows that anything is possible.” . . .

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