I was 8 years old when Nancy Kerrigan was attacked just weeks before the 1994 Winter Olympics, setting off a 24 hour news cycle (years before that became the status quo) detailing the attack and the role Kerrigan's competitor, Tonya Harding, may have played in it.
The fact is, I remember absolutely nothing about Harding, Kerrigan, and the Olympics that year. While other people my age remember watching the Olympics and even remember the outfits Kerrigan and Harding wore, the only thing I remember is hearing the names "Tonya Harding" and "Nancy Kerrigan" floating around in my little world of Nickelodeon tv and Babysitters Club books.
So, I went into I, Tonya the way someone born a decade after me would have: knowing next to nothing. And perhaps that was for the best, since I had literally zero preconceived notions about Harding. What I saw was not so much a film that rehashed a sordid story from over 20 years ago, but a film about how an incredibly talented individual was ruthlessly abused by nearly everyone in her life. Even if she did play a role in Kerrigan's attack...could you really blame her?
I, Tonya spends plenty of time covering "the incident" and the aftermath, but it is less about the facts of the case and more about the two main relationships in Tonya Harding's life: her upbringing with her incredibly foul-mouthed, hateful stage mother, LaVona Golden (Allison Janney, spewing deadpan profanity with a bird on her shoulder, just as the real LaVona did in interviews) and her youthful marriage to pathetic dickweed Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan, who apparently played a superhero in a movie I never saw). As I said to some friends after the movie, "This was a movie about an abusive marriage that happened to have some ice skating in it".
Directed by Craig Gillespie, I, Tonya is unapologetically sympathetic toward Harding. Kerrigan is barely in the movie and we don't hear her side of the story at all. It is taken for granted that Harding really didn't have much to do with Kerrigan's attack and was the victim of the foolhardy men in her life who took what was meant to be a psychological mindfuck on Kerrigan (the original plan was to send her threatening letters) to an extreme level.
Instead of trying to prove Harding innocent, I, Tonya just assumes that she is and spends more time showing how she overcame her impoverished childhood and the intense prejudice against her in the figure skating world through sheer talent and determination. Harding was seen as crude white trash by snobbish figure skating judges and wouldn't have been given the time of day if it weren't for her undeniable talent. The fact that she was the first American female figure skater to attempt and complete a triple axel jump, which essentially involves defying gravity, forced judges to take her seriously, despite her gaudy homemade skating outfits and brazen attitude.
What made this film interesting to me is that it shows what utter bullshit the "American dream" is. It could be argued that Tonya Harding was the best female figure skater during the years she competed; however, she was shut out and kept down because she didn't portray the "image" judges wanted to sell of class and femininity. If America truly is a meritocracy and all you need to succeed is to work hard and develop your talent, Harding should have propelled to the top of the ice skating world easily. But of course, we all know by now that you can be a disgusting racist in the early stages of dementia and still be "president" of the US. This country never was and never will be a meritocracy. People like Harding will always be chastised to simply pull themselves up by their figure skating laces even after those same laces are broken.
Margot Robbie, though 5 years older than Harding was at the time of the 1994 Olympics and 5 inches taller to boot, really captures Harding's personality and quirks, based on the interviews I've seen of the real Harding. I think my favorite moments in I, Tonya are the close-ups of Robbie's overjoyed face after she completes a triple axel or other difficult move, mimicking perfectly how Harding's face looked. I would have thought, based on LaVona's intense stage-mothering, that Harding was pushed into figure skating and basically forced to keep at it. But her expressions during her competitions reveal she truly loved the sport, which make her pleas to the judge at the end of the movie, where she begs to be sent to prison instead of being barred from professional figure skating, all the more heartbreaking.
Was Tonya Harding guilty or innocent? Who cares. I, Tonya suggests that even if she did play a role in Kerrigan's attack, Harding was a victim her whole life: a victim of poverty, a victim of her mother, a victim of prejudice, a victim of her husband, and--finally--a victim of the media and everyone who enjoyed ripping into her. In the end, I, Tonya is about something bigger than the Tonya Harding story: it's about American narratives and the lies we spin to ourselves about working hard and dreaming big. For people like Harding, the punishment for dreaming big is to be destroyed in the court of public opinion.
Grade: B+
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