The Truth is in There – I, Tonya

I, Tonya is a fun retelling of the infamous figure skating scandal that rocked the world… kinda. Margot Robbie brings her A-game to the role of disgraced figure skater Tonya Harding and is beautifully supported by Allison Janney and Sebastian Stan in Craig Gillespie’s romp through truth and lies.

Wildly Contradictory

The film opens with a title card that states this film is based on “irony-free, wildly contradictory, totally true interviews with Tonya Harding and Jeff Gillooly.” This informs the film’s format, and we are given a multi-angled look at how this story culminated in the assault of Nancy Kerrigan – Harding’s main competition. Tonya tells the story from her perspective. And Jim tells his side while various characters join in to give their two cents. The only thing all these versions have in common is that not one character takes responsibility for their part in this tale.

Mother and Daughter

We meet Tonya in 2017, sitting in her kitchen, chain-smoking Marlboro’s and sporting a mid-90’s blonde do that should never have been a thing. This woman is trashy, and she’s not afraid to admit it. I immediately assumed I was seeing the real Tonya Harding, and wondered how I felt about having the real person frame this story. And then I realised, no, this is not Harding. It is, in fact, Margot Robbie completely embodying this character. Robbie’s performance is as balls-to-the-wall as anything I’ve ever seen. Robbie becomes Tonya completely. She captures the abrasive nature of a girl who grew up tough. She perfectly balances sweetness with a vindictive undertone that makes for a compelling and complicated character.

Tonya maintains her innocence. She accepts no responsibility and blames everything on everybody but herself. At first, we feel sympathy for her. Especially when we meet her mother, LaVona. This woman is a piece of work, and Allison Janney plays her with so much commitment, pain and hatred. Not even a glimmer of compassion or love slips through the cracks. Followed by a cloud of cigarette smoke, LaVona is awful, alienating every person who crosses her path.

Tonya blames her mother for all that went wrong in her life. There was not enough love, there was violence, there was hate, there was jealousy. The list goes on. Nothing was Tonya’s fault.

Unreliable Narrators

But when she becomes the first woman to perform a triple axel, she claims all the glory. According to her, she did it, alone, with no help or support. And this is where we start doubting what Tonya tells us. There are discrepancies in her stories, and that is where the fun really begins. As Tonya says, “There’s no such thing as truth. It’s bullshit. Everyone has their own truth, and life just does whatever the fuck it wants.”

The film shows us an event, told by either Tonya, LaVona, Tonya’s husband Jim or his friend Shawn. Then, out of the blue, one of the other narrators chips in or a character breaks the fourth wall to say: “it didn’t happen like that.” This makes us step back and reevaluate our opinions of these characters.

Each character appears sympathetic at the start. But then you realise that this is what the characters want you to believe about them. They are all unreliable narrators, and everything they say is a lie, at least to some extent.

Truth in Lies

But in being fed all these lies, and having them intersect so perfectly, we are able to extract a grain of truth. We will never know how the Kerrigan plot really went down. But we gain a deeper understanding of the major players in this plot. LaVona is upfront about her hateful nature, ironically making her the most sincere character in this tale. Jim seems apologetic, but again, only when he is able to shift blame.

What we ultimately learn about Tonya is that she has not learned anything from this whole experience. She continually plays the victim. I don’t want to say definitively that she wasn’t a victim because, once again, I don’t know. What I do know is that she craves our sympathy. We feel sorry for her when she says: “I was loved for a minute, then I was hated. Then I was just a punch line.”

But the minute Tonya has our sympathy, she turns on us and goes too far. She turns to the camera, smashes that fourth wall and says: “It was like being abused all over again. Only this time it was by you. All of you. You’re all my attackers too.”

Final Thoughts

This moment sums up the entire film: love them or hate them, we see characters through their own eyes, and through their opposer’s eyes — all at once. There is truth to be gained, but not in the juicy, tabloid-y way we expect. We are given character truths — ugly, raw, disgusting truths. This film is a character piece. The events are exciting, but they go nowhere. We have no more clarity from this than we can get from a Wikipedia page. But damn, we get to see inside some of the most hated people in the world. And I enjoyed every sleazy minute of it.