I, Tonya

 

The story of Tonya Harding was never really one that was very interesting to me. Not to age myself, but I was a little young to understand the story when it happened in real life and as the movie sort of alludes to, she fell into obscurity after the whole ordeal. However, since the movie came out in 2017, I have heard enough people really praise this movie, especially people I wouldn't expect to be really into a movie about figure skating. So I thought I'd give it a try. 

As mentioned already and should be pretty obvious, I, Tonya is a semi-biographical story, based on conflicting interviews, of Tonya Harding (played by Margot Robbie). If you're like me, you may be going into this story with no inclination of who Tonya Harding is or what her background is but the movie does a pretty good job at placing her in the middle of a working class, poor family and consistently trying to shed that perception. 

Tonya grows up with her abusive mother (played by Allison Janey) who pushes her into skating and forces her to be the best. Eventually she grows up, meets, and eventually marries Jeff Gillooly (played by Sebastian Stan) who is also abusive towards her. Her escape becomes skating, but she struggles with the perception of being "white trash" or not wholesome enough to be very successful, showing the politics of the skating world other than focusing on the talent. 

This of course all leads up to "the incident" where a man assaults Tonya's rival Nancy Kerrigan with a baton, breaking her leg, and with ties back to Jeff and Tonya. The movie dives pretty deep into that and its fascinating because the movie is presented in somewhat of a mockumentary form where present-day Tonya and Jeff, as well as other characters are giving their accounts of what happened and it's not totally clear who was involved and at what level. 

The movie as a whole is very self aware and is paired with narration and testimony from Tonya, from Jeff, from her mother, from all these other characters providing a cast of unreliable story tellers. 

The focus is less on totally determining the people behind the assault, and more focusing on the life of this uniquely talented woman born in the wrong neighborhood, and raised in the wrong family for the talent that she had. 

I think some of the best comparisons I can draw in this movie is that the toxic relationships happening in white working class environments remind you of something out of a Stephen King horror story. I think there's something about the real-ness of the ways in which people can inflict trauma on one another that is both spooky and real to us that you are able to see in Stephen King novels and I, Tonya taps into that. It's not a horror movie by any means, but it has that uneasiness about it paired with dark comedy. 

I think the other comparison would be the ways in which this movie reminds me of something like Fargo where its focusing on true crime in unorthodox places. The culture of figure skating is not what you'd expect to be in the center of assault charges and conspiracy, but it some how manages to be in a super interesting way. 

It should go without saying that the performances in this movie are very good. I have yet to find a performance from Margot Robbie that I disliked and the rest of the cast is right there with her. Sebastian Stan draws a really weird line of being an absolute scumbag and someone you relate to, and there's a reason Allison Janey won an Oscar for this performance because she's just a weird but compelling character throughout. 

I've seen some criticisms that the movie paints Harding as a victim and doesn't exactly tell a whole lot of truth in the film. While I understand that criticism, I would say that the movie disclaims at the beginning that the narrators of this film are unreliable and contradictory. If you're going into this movie to gain all the facts of the case, this is not going to be an objective story at all. 

But I would argue that's not really the point. I would imagine there's a podcast out there about the facts of the case. But I, Tonya provides a real unsettling, uniquely told dark comedy on a person I didn't know too much about. 

I became interested in this film when a podcaster said that that this was a movie he has watched multiple times and he loved it a lot. Everyone has their preferences so I'm not bashing him, I guess I'd be interested to see how this movie holds up a second time, especially considering I wasn't particularly interested in the topic before I saw the movie and still am not super interested in after seeing it. 

It's a good movie, no doubt about it. I just don't know how interested I am in watching it again. I know that the first time I saw it I really enjoyed it and I kind of forgot about it until I needed to finish this review. 

But you will have to let me know what you think. Overall, I really liked I, Tonya and would say that it's a pretty easy movie to pick up and watch almost casually. I will give credit where its due, a lot of movies that are going for awards feel like events for me and I just want something casual to watch. I, Tonya is like watching a really good, and funny, episode of a true crime show. Great performances from the actors involved and a great example of unreliable narrators telling an interesting story. 

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Thanks for reading!