2017’s “I, Tonya“, directed by Craig Gillespie.
Starring Margot Robbie, Sebastian Stan, Allison Janney,
Julianne Nicholson, Paul Walter Hauser, Bobby Cannavale, Bojana Novakovic, and
Caitlin Carver.
Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress (Margot
Robbie), Best Supporting Actress (Allison Janney), and Best Film
Editing (Tatiana S. Riegel).
What is it about?
“I, Tonya” is the inspired by true events fictional biopic
of the disgraced figure skater Tonya Harding, who in the 1990’s rose to infamy
through the controversy of Harding’s crew attacking rival skater, Nancy
Kerrigan. “I, Tonya” attempts to show Harding’s journey, with an overbearing
and abusive trailer park mother (Allison Janney) forcing Harding to be a figure
skater, and later we get to meet Harding’s husband, Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian
Shaw), who is also abusive towards Harding. Harding has a long road ahead of
her, with so few supportive resources in her life, combined with a figure
skating consortium that isn’t keen on Harding being the face of the sport-
thanks to her trailer park roots. Will we be able to sympathize with Harding’s
point of view by movie’s end?
Why is it worth seeing?
“I, Tonya” features some great performances from Robbie,
Janney, and Shaw respectively as our flawed protagonist, mother, and (ex) husband.
Director Craig Gillepsie borrows liberally from Martin Scorcese’s grab bag of
classic rock infused scenes to give them great rollicking energy, making a
biopic about skating as interesting as possible. And fans of mockumentaries
will find plenty to appreciate here as the fourth wall is frequently broken,
and many scenes are played for so-strange-they’re-hilarious gusto.
Screenwriter Steven Rogers interviewed Harding and
ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, and found both stories about what happened
contradictory- and decided that would be the movie’s strength, in the viewer
having no idea what actually happened and making up their own minds. But not
knowing exactly what happened, is a lot different than making a comedy out of somebody’s
life whom has gone through a lot of pain living in America’s margins.
It’s challenging not to feel for Harding. She’s that girl,
who when working on cars, doesn’t think a rag is necessary- that’s what her
clothes are for. To watch this movie, she will never be able to avoid that lack
of cleanliness, or gain respect for being able to fix those very cars better
than her husband. After the attack on Kerrigan, she was stripped of her
competition medals, and she was banned from the sport for life. Her abusive ex-husband
then released a sex tape of the 2 of them to the media. The clobbered Harding
would try a music band that got booed off of the stage, a boxing career that
she dropped out of, and appear in celebrity videos. She may very well be at
peace now, but to watch here you would never know. Her mother has
admitted to hitting her at a young age, and we know that her first marriage was
tumultuous. Is that the stuff that comedies are made out of?
Given that this time period (mid-90’s) was around the same
time that the media started to scrape the bottom of the barrel to satisfy 24
hour news networks, this movie’s slick energy, and pain and suffering used for
laughs, seems to support the sensationalized media’s goals. It’s unfortunate,
as the great performances and arc of the biopic are really great. Gillepsie
even has an amazing scene to highlight Janney’s disposition in contrast to
everyone else- it’s just too bad we can’t learn more about the protagonist
since the movie is so busy triple-axeling her in the stomach.
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