By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Craig Gillespie
Starring: Allison Janney | Bobby Cannavale | Bojana Novakovic | Caitlin Carver | Julianne Nicholson | Margot Robbie | Paul Walter Hauser | Sebastian Stan
Country: australia, canada, united_kingdom, united_states
Year: 2017
Running time: 119
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5580036/reference
Michael says: “Anyone who was an adult in the early 90’s remembers the story of Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding, but who knows the real story? I was an avid figure skating viewer during those years, and was quite familiar with the trajectory of events that culminated in the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. I was not however, aware of the class divide that so marked Harding and Kerrigan in so many ways. Sure, if I’d been paying more attention to their back stories, I could have figured it out. I did see that Nancy Kerrigan was a suburban princess from my neck of the woods, while Tonya Harding was rough around the edges, and lacked the grace and finesse the judges said they wanted that she more than made up for with her athleticism. To see the background of Harding’s life as it no doubt was, is no excuse for what may or may not have been her involvement in the assault on Kerrigan, but it certainly puts her in a more sympathetic light as another victim in a classist system where you have to fit a certain mold to advance, no matter how good you are. For the scant few of you who might not have been aware of this story, I, TONYA tells the story of a young girl who possessed the natural raw talent to become one of the best women figure skaters in the world, certainly despite rather then because of her environment. What motivated her mother, painted here as an emotionally and physically abusive tyrant, to spend the time and money needed for Tonya’s training as a skater from a very young age, is a mystery. Might she have recognized in her young daughter the skill that would eventually take her to heights that might become lucrative for them? It never really paid off for them, but it could have been a motivating factor, for sure. To add to this truth is stranger than fiction tale, we also have to meet Jeff Gillooly, Tonya’s high school boyfriend, and eventual husband. By the time of the events in questions, the pair had divorced but were living together again, and referring to each other as husband and wife. In 1991, Harding became the first American woman to complete a triple axel during a competition. No one else could accomplish that at the time, but she consistently missed the top marks. People have stated that she lacked the grace and finesse a well-rounded figure skated needed; others were more blunt and suggested that Harding, with her white trash background, was not what the judges wanted to see as a skating champion. When an idle speculative conversation led to an actual plan to take out her competition — the afore-mentioned Nancy Kerrigan — events occurred that are, to this day, unclear. All that is definitively known is that a friend of Gillooly’s hired a couple of thugs to injure Kerrigan after a practice session, thus making it impossible for her to compete. They were successful in bludgeoning the young woman in the knee and forcing her out of competition, but she was able to recover enough to skate the Olympics in 1994. What is uncertain is how much Gillooly, and ultimately, Harding knew about the attack, or whether either of them were directly involved.