“I, Tonya”: Embrace Who You Really Are
Genre：Biography/Comedy/Drama
Director：Craig Gillespie
Cast：Margot Robbie、Sebastian Stan、Allison Janney
Viola's Rating：8.4
As 2018
Winter Olympics takes place in South Korea in February, earlier this year, a
very timely feature film “I, Tonya” was released on January 19. Figure skating
is one of the most anticipated sports at Winter Olympics, just like Tonya Harding’s
achievement is so great and her scandal itself is so ugly.
Following
the life of Tonya Harding and her connection to the famous 1994 attack, this
biographical, dramatic comedy tells the story of how competitive figure skater
Tonya Harding rises amongst the ranks at the US Figure Skating Championships,
but her future in figure skating is thrown into doubt when her ex-husband steps
in.
Australian
director Craig Gillespie made good use of camera movements to convey emotions.
Close-up shots invite the audience to experience what main characters feel, and
the lines they say during these shots produce the effect of “breaking the
fourth wall”. Aside from key shots showing Tonya’s childhood, director
Gillespie use one-shot scene to take moviegoers with him to go through a period
of time when these scenarios appear in Tonya’s life again and again. Besides
the above-mentioned movements, the camera usage capturing the beauty and power
of figure skating in the film is breathtaking.
Presented
as a mockumentary, although it seems that “I, Tonya” indicates that she’s
unaware of her ex-husband’s move, which some people are doubtful about, the
flick includes interviews from different angles such as Tonya, her mother, her
ex-husband and her bodyguard.
In “I,
Tonya”, we not only see her story and know more about the background of the
1994 attack, but also learn more about figure skating, the sports. Most sports
are evaluated quantitatively, even with sports like diving that also require
judges to give out points, there’s a guideline to follow.
However,
conventionally, figure skating belongs to “princesses”, those with high quality
dresses, from high class families and are well-behaved while Tonya doesn’t fit
into any of these categories. Whether what we see in the motion picture is true
or not may still be debatable, but in both “I, Tonya” and real world, this main
character embraces who she really is and lives the best life she’s capable of,
and that’s the lesson the movie teaches us.
Being a
black comedy, “I, Tonya” focuses on Tonya Harding’s past, her relationship with
her mother and ex-husband with a comical atmosphere. Trying to tell the story
neutrally, the picture celebrates Tonya’s talent and displays how she embraces
who she really is at the same time. It’s a sad work that makes you laugh, and
whether Tonya’s a good person or not is waiting for the audience to judge.
Photo Credit: IMDb
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