Just Because I, Tonya Is Heavily Stylized Doesn't Mean It Can't Also Be Thoughtful

Craig Ferguson is one of my all-time favorite late night TV shows hosts, this guy bent the rules of the American late-night TV show format with such glee and wit, it was absolutely wonderful. Interestingly though, one of my absolute favorite moments of his show comes not in the form of a punchline but in a thoughtful monologue he gave in 2007, which I've embedded below this paragraph for you to watch. Here, he talks about how his jokes lampooning certain people (like Kevin Costner) in situations where they're obviously having actual problems related to health or mental issues were bothering him on a personal level. He goes on to talk about the then-recent actions of Britney Spears and how they'd been the focus of widespread media attention and were the butt of countless jokes from the late night TV show hosts, including himself. He notes his discomfort with mocking her unorthodox behavior and notes how he recognizes that behavior from his own actions from he when he was an addict fifteen years prior.

To him, the sort of constant media attention and mockery Spears was receiving wasn't helpful in the slightest with the process of trying to get one's life in order while in the process of recovery. He concludes the monologue by noting that meeting and connecting with other people going through the same issues as yourself is the best way to get yourself on the road to recovery. Non-stop media attention and ridicule won't help that and few figures received as much of both of those things as Tonya Harding, a figure skater who was implicated in a coordinated attack on rival figure skater Nancy Kerrigan. The burgeoning 24-hour news network used the ensuing chaos of this event to generate more publicity than dogs have hairs, but who was Tonya Harding, who was the person beneath the caricature media outlets were using to print money?

Well, for starters, Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) is the star of the movie that is the subject of this review, I, Tonya, but she's also a person who has always loved figure skating. Ever since she was four years old, she's had the drive and the talent neccesary to be an ice skater. Something else she had from a young age was an abusive mother, LaVonya Fay Golden (Allison Janney), who pushed her daughter to greatness by way of a constant stream of physical and verbal abuse. As Harding got older, all of that abuse took it's psychological toll on her to the point that she was determined to get the admiration from judges of her ice skating tournaments and the country at large that she couldn't get in her childhood or from her physically abusive husband Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan). She's determined to win at any cost and of course, that determination is gonna lead to trouble.

This story is presented in a delightfully unique manner that has modern-day versions of prominent figures in the story (portrayed by actors like Margot Robbie and Sebastian Stan) talking to an unseen documentary crew about their personal recollections of the various events that brought us to the whole Nancy Kerrigan "incident". As some on-screen text that kicks off I, Tonya states, this whole thing is based on wildly contradictory personal accounts of various non-fictional events and this structure is a creative way for screenwriter Steven Rogers to handle just how many different versions of the truth are out there in regards to who Tonya Harding is.

This way of organizing the movie, which evoked the style and tone of Michael Bay's Pain & Gain for me, allows for plenty of humor to seep in emerging from just how crazy certain plot turns derived from real life are. Sometimes this zany method of presenting this story does leave things feeling scattershot, and while we're talking about the script I'll also note there's too many overly obvious music cues to be found peppered through the film (is there a law I don't know about that says all movies that have a sequence set in the 1970's have to utilize the tune Spirit In The Sky?). Overall though, Rogers has written a mighty fine screenplay that makes use of a winning way to present a tale of ever-escalating craziness in a unique fashion. Plus, this more heightened approach to the entire motion picture ends up being slyly brilliant in how it helps the film's depiction of abuse feel realistic. Now, abuse can manifest in extremely subtle ways, that happens all the time, but it can also be exhibited in extremely over-the-top pieces of behavior. Individuals seeking to have power and dominion over other individuals will go to insane lengths to do just that and the more stylized aesthetic of I, Tonya as a whole allows it be unflinching in how it depicts the more amplified ways abusive behavior can appear.

While it's not impossible to depict such behavior in a more nuanced or subdued motion picture, I do find it fascinating how I, Tonya uses it's more bonkers tone as a way to deliver a depiction of physical and verbal abuse that's both heightened and realistic. Just as the film wants to use a stylized approach to storytelling to unearth the truth about who Tonya Harding is, so too does it was to use that same approach to deliver a realistic portrayal aggressive physical abuse. Looking at the motion picture as a whole, it's amazing it's able to deliver such a thoughtful take on physical abuse while also producing humorous farcical sequences like the execution of the attack on Nancy Kerrigan by two dopes who might as well have escaped from a Coen Brothers movie, but those two elements do indeed manage to coexist without creating jarring tonal shifts.

Director Craig Gillespie shows a lot more energy behind the camera than he did in his last two movies (a pair of live-action Disney dramas, Million Dollar Arm and The Finest Hours), a lot why I, Tonya works so well as kinetic entertainment is because of the vigorous camerawork he and cinematographer Nicolas Karakatsanis use to bring the screenplay to life, though it must be said that some of the ice skating sequences focused on Tonya Harding did look odd to me in terms of their visual presentation. Gillespie also manages to get some strong performances out of his cast, particularly in regards to Margot Robbie who, even considering the notable acting she's done in the past, is shockingly good at just blending into the role of Tonya Harding. The way she portrays the characters gradual transformation into someone hungering for approval from anyone has a potent sense of tragedy to it while her comedic timing in the interview segments is especially noteworthy.

Portraying the two most notable characters Robbie hopes to garner that aforementioned approval from are Allison Janney and Sebastian Stan, both of whom are stellar in their work here. Janney finds some dark humor in her performance as well as genuine menace while I had no idea Stan had the chops to pull off a sad-sack abuser like Gillooly, he really shines as an actor here. Both of these two do well in portraying people Tonya Harding hoped to get some form of admiration or favor from (though she learns early on neither one, especially Gillooly, will do that) and I, Tonya does a fascinating job depicting the psychological make-up informing her attempts to seek that approval, which comes in response to all the abuse she's endured, from entities ranging from ice skating competition judges to the general American public at large. That same public ate up all the negative and demeaning coverage of Tonya Harding as they could, and you know, as Craig Ferguson said, maybe that's not the best way to handle people obviously going through deep psychological trauma and also a person who, by certain accounts, went through even more cruel actions at the hand of her husband the film doesn't touch on? There's an actual complex human being nestled underneath the caricature large-scale media outlets and the public at large treated her as back in 1994. That's the person I, Tonya looks to explore & reveal and it does so both thoughtfully and entertainingly.