Home > Buenos Diaz > I, Tonya, Makes the Podium

I, Tonya, Makes the Podium

By Gloria Diaz

Check out Gloria's Blog — Edge of Gloria!

Fort Wayne Reader

2018-02-15

After months of anticipation, I finally got to see I, Tonya, the sportsdramockumentary of the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan Saga in 1994. I eagerly tried to explain to the millennial ticket-seller what the movie was about, but she'd never heard of the two figure skaters, and I doubt she'll bother to see the film, because the Kardashians aren't in it.

But I'm old enough to remember when it all went down. It was perfect: Harding was the bad girl of figure skating, phenomenally talented despite being a smoker burdened with asthma, garish costumes, and bad parenting, and Kerrigan was the working-class girl with wealthy sorority girl looks, $5,000 skating dresses designed by Vera Wang, a loving family, and a tendency to fall apart at important competitions, like the 1993 Worlds. Redneck vs. a girly girl. West Coast vs. East Coast. It was impossible not to pick a side.

The movie admits up front the facts from the interviews diverged widely; it was a he said/she said, situation and nothing seemed to add up. It sounds like a disaster to base a movie on, but the producers did very well with the material they had.

The story is told with a sympathetic nod to Harding, and there are a few scenes that are hard to watch. Harding claims her mother was abusive, and to escape from her, she married Jeff Gillooly. Bad decision. He smacks her around like her mom did, and the movie doesn't shy away from either verbal or visual abuse. Studies have shown that abused individuals can't think straight. If nothing else, the movie shows how poverty, physical and verbal abuse can screw up a person's thought process.

Am I making excuses for Harding? No, but if the abuse is accurate, it's easier to understand why Harding felt that skating was her only path to a decent life. She'd dropped out of school to devote more time to her skating. For an athlete like her, it made sense. However, I wonder what would have happened if she hadn't met Gillooly. Because at the end of the film, actor Sebastian Stan, who looks more like 1994 Gillooly than the original did, admits he is responsible for destroying Harding's career.

Surrounded by a driven, angry mother (played to perfection by Allison Janney), a goofy, abusive husband and his obese, delusional friend who, instead of sending threatening letters to Kerrigan (as was the plan) got someone to whack her on the knee instead, and couldn't keep his mouth shut about it, Harding was probably the most talented athlete ever who never had a chance.

The cinematography stands out, with an on-ice camera recording practices and performances of Harding, from three-year-old beginner to her disastrous 1994 Olympic long program, gives a nice up-close perspective. There's also a nice one-shot that winds through the house, showing Gillooly alone, then the street, from the perspective (I'm guessing) of the back of Harding's pick-up truck. Margot Robbie, who plays Harding, trained for five months for the skating scenes, but ultimately had to rely on CGI because the only women capable of doing a triple axel (the hardest jump in figure skating) were training for the Olympics and didn't want to risk possibly injuring themselves for a movie about the bad girl of skating. It looks completely realistic, and the only beef I have with the movie is the flaunting of the “Katarina Rule.” During the competition scenes, I was shocked at how much ass I was seeing. Honestly, it was like Robbie and other competitors were wearing G-strings under their skating skirts. I wasn't imagining it: during the credits, the filmmakers showed an edited version of Harding's 1991 U.S. Nationals long program, and there's plenty of material covering Harding's butt. Two points off for that, Gillespie!

The main characters push the narrative along with commentary on major events leading up to “the incident”, as the characters refer to it. They address the viewer, breaking the fourth wall, which gives a personal touch, as if we are actually there.

The scene that was hardest for me to watch wasn't the beatings or Harding's mother throwing a knife into her arm, but the part where LaVona comes over after fingers are pointing at Tonya. Uncharacteristically calm and supportive, the viewer thinks that the acrimonious relationship between mother and daughter might turn over a new leaf with the allegations and news crews in front of Harding's house 24/7. Harding lets her mother into the house, but during a tender scene (and yes, I cried) Tonya, who just wants her mom to say she loves her and pushed her because she wanted her to succeed, discovers the soft words of her mom are just bait to get her to say something incriminating, recorded on the tape player in LaVona's coat pocket. Harding, a veteran of years of abuse and crazy behavior, is almost but not quite fooled, and takes the recorder, throwing it and her mother out the door.

Whether or not Harding is guilty, one thing will never change: she was the first American woman to land a triple axel in competition successfully. And, as the movie notes, at one point, she was the best skater in the world. It's tragic to think that such a gifted athlete had the thing that mattered most to her taken away, because she got involved with idiots. Because maybe she doubted her own talent, and felt her competition needed to be taken out, by any means necessary. Because being literally beaten down by words and hands and hairbrushes broke something in Harding that doomed her to the highest high, and brought her to the lowest low.