Every artist—every painter, every filmmaker, every author or playwright, every actor, every sculptor or designer—will tell you the same thing: art uncovers truth.
What good is a piece of art if it doesn’t tell you something about the artist’s world, their perspective, their ideals? What good is art if it doesn’t express something that someone can grab hold of and keep as truth in their hearts?
But “I, Tonya” is a little different. The film takes several perspectives and mashes them together to uncover not the truth, but the characters’ hopes for the truth. The film follows the story of Tonya Harding, a competitive figure skater in the early 1990s whose career ended abruptly after the 1994 Olympics.
Tonya (Margot Robbie) is a redneck, rough-and-tumble kind of girl. She has stood out like a sore thumb since she was 4 years old, when her mother (Allison Janney) strong-armed her into a skating class meant for pre-teens. Dropping out of high school to compete, her life became a breeding ground for abuse, unfair judgment in competitions (she doesn’t have that wholesome look that the judges want) and desperation to be seen for the talent she possesses.
And finally, she is seen. But, unfortunately, her pinnacle moment is an incriminating connection to an attack on Nancy Kerrigan, Tonya’s skating rival. When a man breaks Kerrigan’s kneecap right before the Olympic competition, all evidence points to Tonya, her ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan), and her bodyguard, Shawn Eckardt (Paul Walter Hauser).
The pieces of this story become clear as the film fans out, searching for details. But, honestly, it’s less a search than a piecemeal storytelling session, cutting back and forth between interviews with Tonya and crew and dramatized retellings in a more common cinematic structure. Each character tells a version of the story in which they come across as innocent—or at least better than the next guy—painting an intricately biased, contradicting picture of the order of events.
The significance of this event in figure skating history makes “I, Tonya” interesting enough. But, for anyone who spent their childhood trying to mimic the moves of the Olympic skaters on their living room floor, there are some visual perks to watching the film. In each event on the ice, the cinematography veers from the typical wide-shot, sweeping motions that encapsulate the entire performance, instead focusing on more up-close and personal shots of Tonya while skating. These action shots are much more intense than the footage you would actually see from the Olympics, reflecting Tonya’s spirited personality.
Robbie pierces through the screen with her performance, engaging you with Tonya’s tough exterior shell and flippant attitude, but slowly winning you over with her desperation. Janney’s performance is also heartbreakingly on point, as the turbulent relationship between mother and daughter only rises in tension over the span of the film.
The film does an excellent job of revitalizing the gray areas that this event left for the mouths of the feeding public. While they are still very much left gray, they will certainly force you to pause and think. “I, Tonya” is a film to bump to the top of your watching list this Oscars season. It plays soon at Midtown Cinema.
Midtown Cinema
February Special Events
Double Feature: “Groundhog Day” (1993)
Friday, Feb. 2, 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.
Oscar Winners Series
“Glory” (1989)
Sunday, Feb. 4, 2:30 p.m.
“Precious” (2009)
Sunday, Feb. 11, 2:30 p.m.
“Monster’s Ball” (2001)
Sunday, Feb. 18, 2:30 p.m.
“Lilies of the Field” (1963)
Sunday, Feb. 25, 2:30 p.m.
Down in Front!
“The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies” (1963)
Friday, Feb. 9, 9:30 p.m.
3rd in the Burg $3 Movie
“Get Out” (2016)
Friday, Feb. 16, 9:30 p.m.
