DIRECTOR:
Craig Gillespie STARRING: Margot Robbie,
Sebastian Stan, Allison Janney Julianne Nicholson, Bobby Cannavale PRODUCER: Tom Ackerley, Margot Robbie, Steven
Rogers, Bryan Unkeless SCREENWRITER:
Steven Rogers MUSIC: Peter Nashel CINEMATOGRAPHER: Nicolas Karakatsanis EDITOR: Tatiana S. Riegel GENRE: Biography – Drama PRODUCTION COMPANY: LuckyChap Entertainment,
Clubhouse Pictures, AI Film DISTRIBUTOR:
Neon COUNTRY: United States
LANGUAGE: English RUNNING TIME:
119 minutes
Technical assessment:
3.5
Moral assessment:
3
CINEMA rating:
V16
I Tonya is a biopic of American Olympian skater Tonya
Harding. The movie employs “mockumentary” breaking of the 4th wall
techniques to lighten the tragic fate of the protagonist. The movie follows
Tonya as she wades through her abusive mother molding and training her to
become a figure skater through negative reinforcement. Through rigid training,
Tonya becomes the best female figure skater but her social status and
unconventional choices prevent her from being acknowledged as one. At 15 or
16, she marries 18 year old Jeff Gillooly who seems to confuse her with a
punching bag. Meanwhile, Tonya diverts her pain to perfecting her craft. She
becomes the first figure skater to complete a triple axel in the competition.
She qualifies for the 1994 Olympic competition, but an half-witted plan of her
husband and her bodyguard to disable her competitor, Nancy Kerrigan, backfires. Nancy finishes 2nd while she
lands in the 8th place, her husband and cohorts are arrested and she, banned
from figure skating, resigns to her fate shifts to boxing.
The tragic
life of Tonya is somewhat lightened by the style Gillespie has taken. But the
laughters are not sustained as the discomforted audience choke a bit every time
Tonya breaks the wall in an effort to annotate her pain through witty sarcasm.
The story is not unique but the story telling is. It is almost embarrassing to
be entertained by Tonya’s life knowing that more than half of it is real. But
the biggest success of the film is Robbie’s explosive personality and dynamic
performance (some scenes could not keep up with her). This movie not only chronicles one of the
most controversial scandals in figure skating history but also leaves a dent in
our consciousness that audiences will remember long after the end credits roll.
Mostly because it does not try too hard to shove the truth to the audience but
explores the different sides of the truth without melodrama but with more
impact.
Pain damages
and breaks people. But it is the emotional, not the physical pain, that leaves
deeper scars. From the beginning, Tonya was in pain—her mother’s verbal abuse,
the discrimination of the figure skating environments and her husband’s
violence. Eventually that pain defined her self-worth that she needed to resort
to nonconformity to redefine herself. The very structure that needed to support
a person’s dignity and growth were the very ones that destroyed them. Perhaps
this is a strong reminder for all of us. As part of the structure, our role is
to be the nesting ground for a person to discover, to form and to strengthen
his humanity. We need to be the healer of pain not the creator of wounds. We
need to build bridges with acceptance and respect, not walls that segregate and
divide. As individuals, we need to
discover our worth in our hearts and souls regardless of what the structure
offers. We need to realize that the first aid to the pain of rejection, abuse
and violence is the love we give ourselves. The movie needs mature and
discerning audiences to understand the layers of meanings between scenes.
