A film celebrates a compelling hero: Wrinkled, vain, gritty, inspiring Diana Nyad

Of all lonely quarters of the planet, perhaps the long-distance swimmer inhabits the strangest one. Her world is murky, not penetrated easily by sound and her destination not easily visible. The runner’s land can be desolate but rarely alive, while here the water surges and tugs, a restless, moody landscape replete with the sting of the unknown.

But Diana Nyad goes on, through darkness and storms, through seawater vomits and swollen, jellyfish-stung face, trying to swim from Cuba to Florida. Trying in 1978. Trying in 2011. Trying in 2012. Trying in 2013. Will she ever get there? How much beating can a spirit take? The film Nyad, currently on Netflix, is a portrait in persistence and the journey she undertakes, like her, is a blistered, bold, brilliant thing.