Two Oscar nominations but no Best Picture nomination for I, Tonya. This film is better than you might think.
I, Tonya (Margot Robbie, Allison Janney, Sebastian Stan) – Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan will forever be linked though neither of them won an Olympic gold medal. At one time, they vied for #1 among U.S. women figure skaters. Who doesn’t think that Tonya Harding had her husband whack the knee of Kerrigan before the Olympics? Who can’t close their eyes and see Kerrigan crying out “Why me?” after the attack?
I, Tonya isn’t just a look into (what the movie calls) “the incident.” In fact, very little of the film involves the attack. Instead, this is a slick biopic into Harding’s screwed up life. Australian Margot Robbie stars as Harding, the skating prodigy but redneck product of a verbally abusive mother. Harding was to skating what John McEnroe was to tennis or Dennis Rodman to basketball: anti-heroes. We loved Kerrigan, Connors, and Jordon; we loved to hate McEnroe, Rodman and Harding. Harding was a pariah in the skating community because she wasn’t dainty, classy, sexy, respectful or deferential; she was the bad girl.
Robbie is mesmerizing both off the ice and on. She reportedly spent five months learning to skate and it shows on screen. There was no faking what we saw. She did for this film what Ryan Gosling did in La La Land. No fancy camera work. But that is only half of it. As Harding, she is both unrelenting and a victim. She is determined and focused. And she is both damaged and strengthened by her mother, LaVona Golden, who pushed, insulted, and harassed her while providing every cent of her wages as a waitress to her daughter’s skating.
Allison Janney, who is among Hollywood’s most versatile actors, plays abusive and foul-mouthed LaVona with unrelenting gusto. Wow, what a performance! Best known for playing C.J. Creeg on The West Wing and Bonnie on TV’s Mom, her character in I, Tonya is most like the strict mother she played in Hairspray rather than the mouthy stepmother in Juno. There are no redeeming qualities in LaVona.
Tonya is the product of her mother but with the hope of escape through her skating. Tonya is attracted to the wrong man, Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan of The Martian). He loves her but, like so many abusive husbands and boyfriends, beats her while, all the while, proclaiming his love. Gillooly hangs with the wrong guys, which eventually leads to the Kerrigan “incident.”
In I, Tonya, we dive much deeper into Harding. We learn all that led up to her quest for gold, her involvement in “the incident,” and her life afterward. During the credits, we even get to learn what has happened to her this century and get to see clips of the real Harding and her mother.
The portrayals are uncanny. Writer Steve Rogers’ (Hope Floats, Kate & Leopold) script “breaks the fourth wall” often, allowing the characters to be more intimate with the audience. Director Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl, Fright Night, Million Dollar Arm, The Finest Hours) allows the actors to shine.
I, Tonya is a really good film with a great cast that deserved the tenth slot for Best Picture. With Oscar nominations for both Robbie and Janney, everyone should go see it.