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By now we all know the story of Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan. Or do we? And whatever we think we know about ‘the incident,’ we probably know even less about Tonya Harding herself. Last year’s I, Tonya, which earned three Academy Award nominations and is now available on home video, attempts to clear things up. Or not. The film tells the story of Tonya from her childhood with a loving, then absent, father and an overbearing mother who looked for any outlet to get the kid out of her hair. Tonya loved ice skating so Lavona enrolled her for a class in which the instructor had already warned that she did not teach children as young as Tonya … and then she saw the girl skate.
But Tonya had an uphill battle in the sport, the biggest hurdle being her redneck pride. She was never glamorous enough for the judges and despite being able to outskate everyone else on the ice, she never got the scores she deserved. Tonya had her own battles off the ice as well after she met and fell in love with Jeff Gilooley, her first boyfriend and husband. To say the two had a volatile relationship would be an understatement but despite their ups and downs, Jeff was willing to do whatever it took to help Tonya get ahead and make it to the Olympics. Even if it included terrorizing her friend Nancy Kerrigan (yes, the two were actually friends before ‘the incident’). And then everything spiraled completely out of control thanks to Jeff’s friend Shawn and the rest is history.
I, Tonya isn’t your stereotypical biopic because of the structure of the story. The film is based on actual interviews with the key participants (minus Shawn, who has passed away) and a reporter (played by Bobby Cannavale) with the cast filmed allegedly speaking the actual words from the interviews, and then using some fourth wall breaking flashbacks and traditional storytelling to make the point that we’ll probably never really know how it all played out with both Tonya and Jeff giving a lot of conflicting information.
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Whichever version of the story you choose to believe, the film is funny and dramatic with some great performances and direction and a really good script that manages to put all of the disparate elements together so that it doesn’t become confusion. Margot Robbie is terrific as Tonya and Sebastian Stan also does a great job as Jeff, a far cry from his more well-known role as Marvel’s Bucky Barnes, aka The Winter Soldier (and now the White Wolf for those who’ve seen Black Panther). Julianne Nicholson also offers some good support as Tonya’s first — and third — skating coach Diane Rawlinson and Paul Walter Hauser is either brilliant or frustratingly annoying as Shawn. We’ll leave that up to you. But despite the all-around great performances, and the fact that the movie is about Tonya Harding, the whole thing is completely stolen by Allison Janney as Tonya’s mother Lavona. And she’s almost upstaged by Lavona’s parrot, a permanent fixture on her shoulder during the interview segments (and which it appears Janney had to do some quick improv with as the bird would sometimes peck at her ear or tug on her hair). Lavona, as Janney has said in interviews, a terrible person, the most terrible person she’s ever played but she still manages to show us a lot more beneath the character’s exterior whether it be begrudging pride in her daughter or, most of the time, outright contempt. No matter how terrible Lavona is, you cannot take your eyes off of Janney when she’s on screen and she proves why she deserved that Oscar win.
The film is also very well directed considering all the different formats used to bring the story to life, and the scenes featuring Tonya ice skating are simply breathtaking as the camera glides along the ice with Tonya in several uninterrupted takes, many times with Margot Robbie’s face clearly visible. The skating scenes are real technical marvels perfectly showcased on Universal Pictures Home Entertainment’s new Blu-ray release. The movie, apparently shot both on film and video, has a nice, uniform look throughout with the HD image never revealing which is which. With some of the film using a documentary style filmed in some pretty run down homes and dark arenas, it’s not the most colorful movie out there (with the exception of some of Tonya’s questionable skating outfits) but the Blu-ray accurately represents what the director intended.
The Blu-ray DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack doesn’t give the surrounds a lot to do until the skating scenes when the music and cheering crowds kick in, putting you right in the middle of the action. The dialog is crisp and clear throughout. The Blu-ray also includes a few bonus items including a commentary track with director Craig Gillespie, five Deleted Scenes (17:25) and five Behind the Scenes featurettes (15:53) that contains some good cast interviews and a look at how the skating scenes were accomplished. An adequate collection of material but it makes one wish for perhaps a sit down chat with Robbie and Harding.
If you missed I, Tonya when it was in theaters, now is your chance to bring the movie home to enjoy the terrific performances and to try to decide for yourself just how complicit Tonya was in ‘the incident.’
Universal Pictures Home Entertainment generously provided Hotchka with a Blu-ray versions of the films for reviewing purposes.
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