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User Reviews for: I, Tonya

AndrewBloom
CONTAINS SPOILERS8/10  6 years ago
[8.2/10] It’s easy to become desensitized to violence on the screen. Superheroes can pummel hordes of faceless bad guys, or each other. Jedi can leap into lightsaber fights from hear to the edge of the galaxy. And slapstick comedy can turn events that would cause untold pain in real life into cartoony hilarity.

But we don’t tend to think about when people become desensitized to violence not because of the images they’ve seen or the context in which they’re presented, but rather because it’s an everyday part of their lives, something they don’t enjoy or relish, but no more question or find out of the ordinary than they would bad weather.

I, Tonya, then, is a film about what it is to expect abuse in your life, both physical and emotional, to the point that you no longer question it, or even fully recognize it. It depicts Tonya Harding as someone who has heard so many times that she doesn’t measure up, that she isn’t good enough, that she’ll never amount to anything (often with physical reminders to accentuate these put downs) that she accepts any abuse in exchange for even the prospect that someone will appreciate her, will respect her, will love her.

The most devastating line in film comes in one of the montages about the early tumult in the marriage between Tonya and her husband Jeff, where she rationalizes his domestic violence away by reasoning, “My mom loves me, and she hits me.” It’s a sad, but understandable equivalence from someone who’s known nothing else, going from one abusive family relationship to another.

The grand achievement of the film is the way that it manages to approach these dark events in a manner that’s both incisive and funny. It doesn’t skimp on the ridiculousness of the world of professional figure skating, or on the shaggier side of this collection of nudniks each trying to conquer the world in their own way, but it doesn’t shy away from or compartmentalize the darker underbelly of all that lunacy either.

Part of what makes it stomachable is that we get most of the film in the form of cobbled-together recollections from Tonya and the other players, with plenty of fourth wall-breaking commentary and voice over to add a layer of cutting or knowing commentary onto these events. That device allows the film to be at a remove when it needs to, giving the audience a chance to reflect on what’s happening rather than forced to be a part of it.

But when we do feel it, it’s through Tonya’s eyes, and for Tonya, violence, disappointment, and shaming are a matter of fact thing. That’s the soft tragedy that winds its way through the film. Horrid incident after horrid incident befalls Tonya, but she seems to take it in stride, because it’s all she’s ever known, until those moments accumulate and accumulate until they’ve taken away the thing she cares most about, the thing that gave her a chance to escape that life.

That shame is personified by Tonya’s mother, LaVona, a profane battleaxe who browbeats her preternaturally talented daughter deeper and deeper into the sport. It’s a powerhouse performance from the inimitable Allison Janney, and character aided both by Janney’s stellar acting and some choice moments in the script.

It would be easy to make LaVona a pure monster, with how she degrades her daughter at every turn and resorts to physical violence and cruel stunts when she doesn’t get her way. But in scenes where she tells Tonya that she sacrificed their relationship to make Tonya great, she becomes comprehensible, though not laudable, as all great villains should be. And there’s that twinkle in Janney’s eye, that sincerity she can muster, that gives the audience just enough to wonder if LaVona means it when she tells her daughter that she’s on her side, even when she’s surreptitiously recording her in search of a scoop.

That moment is a the whole film in microcosm, a story of people seeming to welcome Tonya, to give her the attention and affection she hopes for, only to tear it away from her. The film’s nod to this is a tad overwritten, but those are also the terms in which it interrogates celebrity. Beyond LaVona, beyond Jeff, Tonya wants to be embraced by the world, and for one shining moment, her talent makes her the darling she always wanted to be.

But then, the scandal hits. An incident she may or may not have been involved with comes to consume her career and reputation, and after coming so close, after having her all-too-brief moment in the sun, she becomes a laughing stock and a punching bag, in a country of late night comedians and tabloid headline writers who help set the stage for people to either groan or titter when hearing her name. The world acts as her mother and husband did, however unwittingly, with her desperate for approval and appreciation, and chasing it until she’s smacked down into her place once more.

That sense of Tonya having overstepped her bounds is also a palpable theme in the film. There’s a steady sense of how a combination of classism and sexism hindered her at every turn. Skating is (or at least was) a sport where women were expected to act a certain way, where competitors were expected to uphold a certain spirit of grace and genteelity. Tonya met none of those criteria. She was more athletic than graceful, a woman of poverty rather than refinement, and the way the staid gatekeepers refused to let her in for this is one more misfortune visited upon her.

This all makes I, Tonya sound far more grim that it is. There is a Coen Bros. quality to the film, where a bunch of small time, bumbling crooks try to pull off a caper and fall on their faces, while laughing at the absurdity and darkness bundled up with that. The script is smart and funny, with plenty of razor sharp lines and wry observations that work on multiple levels. And the shots and sequences of Tonya’s performances on the ice capture the sense of power and achievement, using the camera as her dance partner and greatest champion, showing a talent that cannot be denied to witness, even if it can be denied on score cards.

And after all of that denial, all of that rejection, all of those painful stumbles, the final scene highlights her brief but headline-grabbing boxing career. After all, that sort of physical violence is all she knows, the irony being that she doesn’t even understand the outpouring of support when Nancy Kerrigan is “hit once.” After her lifetime of violence, Tonya is too desensitized to it to comprehend what the big deal is, or where the similar sympathy is for her when all manner of authority: from her mother, to the powers that be of the skating establishment, to the police, don’t seem to care.

There’s a recurring leitmotif in I, Tonya where Tonya constantly denies that anything is her fault. There’s the implication that she’ll devolve into self-sabotage or give less-than-her-best effort and yet pass the buck for any misstep onto a conspiracy or a bias or something else that she’s not responsible for.

And yet, the only thing she publicly accepts guilt for is the one thing for which she’s truly blameless -- the people in her life. When Tonya makes her public apology, she says she had no prior knowledge of the attack, but apologize for surrounding herself with people who did and would. It’s those people -- her mother who derided her and primed her for another abuser like her husband -- who helped shape Tonya into the person so susceptible to pursuing any manner of affection and attention, while not fully comprehending the gravity of the risk and pain to be inflicted on her in the process of seeking it out.

I, Tonya is not your standard biopic. It is dark but funny, sympathetic but not hagiographic, and narrow but fulsome. It presents the story of a young woman so inured to abuse, so used to its awful presence, that she hardly recognizes it anymore, until it keeps from the things she wants most.
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Saint Pauly
8/10  6 years ago
_I, Tonya_ is a shining example of how a 'based on a true story' movie should be made. Equal parts truth, empathy and pathos -- with a double helping of humour -- the film takes the disaster that was Tonya Harding's youth and makes it palatable without diminishing its gravity. Craig Gillespie has achieved the impossible by filming a train wreck with all the grace of a ballet. Or a figure skating routine. (Wanna see a derailed locomotive do a triple axel?)
The film stock reinforces the look of the late 80s / early 90s conveyed by the clothes and the cars but none of these is as efficient as the music. My god, the soundtrack is as well used as that of _Baby Driver_; even more so as the songs here communicate not just the mood of the moment but define the decade, as well.
As for the acting, Margot Robbie has the Midas touch because whatever role she takes on, you Midas well nominate her for all the awards. Sebastian Stan does such a good job you'd hardly suspect he's one of the hottest actors working today and so much good has been written about Allison Janney that anything I say would be redundant.
To make a long review short, _I Tonya_ is the movie that this sympathetic and tragically sincere equivocator deserves.
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mooney240
/10  one year ago
**I, Tonya is an intriguing biopic told in a fresh, unique way that most any cinephile can appreciate.**

Director, Craig Gillespie, took a wild, unbelievable true story and told it with a brilliant frenetic, crazed energy that emphasized I, Tonya’s insane tale all the more. The documentary-style interviews further delved into the deranged psyche of its characters trusting the story to unreliable narrators forcing the audience to question every moment. I loved the hypothetical or dream sequences that exaggerated the public’s account of the life and drama of Tonya Harding. I honestly didn’t think I would enjoy this movie, but Margot Robbie’s outstanding frenzied Oscar-worthy performance and unique storytelling proved me wrong.
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jessetaylor
/10  6 years ago
I had zero expectations going into this as not much is known about the movie except for the cast - and obviously the story as it was a huge news event in the 90s - but it turned out to be a wildly entertaining albeit flawed biopic. The film settled on a style and tone that falls somewhere around the Coen brothers territory, but also gave me Christopher Guest vibes with its talking head moments and Paul Thomas Anderson level soundtrack use. It had a lot of cinematic elements, but overall it's a super accessible crowd pleaser.

There are two big problems I have with this film, however. Its soundtrack, while filled to the brim with classic songs, often felt out of place or completely unnecessary at times. For an iconic 90s story, having only 70s songs was an interesting choice. A lot of the songs played at strange moments as well and sometimes they were just too on-the-nose. For example, Supertramp's "Goodbye Stranger" plays as Jeff and Tonya separate for the first time. The other problem with this film involves the inclusion of the fourth wall breaking moments. This happens maybe 10 times throughout the film, but it didn't add anything and in fact distracted me from the story when it happened.

That said, what's great about this movie is how *truly* funny it is. I was expecting a few laughs because of the ridiculousness of the story, but the comedy here was really smart. It plays like a crime-gone-wrong Fargo-esque tale in its latter half and it works this way really well. The performances are strong especially from the always good Allison Janney (who is a huge scene stealer) and Margot Robbie. I've never seen Robbie give a performance like this before and I consider this her first big, meaty roll that allows her to use all of the acting bones in her body. She's funny, charming, brash, and you can tell she really committed herself to this role. Very impressed.
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Jeff323
/10  6 years ago
Fantastic feel-good story with an anti-establishment vibe. The movie challenges your interpretation of the events at the time, and has several sobering moments (oj news coverage, tonya spitting blood). Also funny as all get out.
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