Review of I, Tonya (2017) by Kj P — 16 Jan 2018

Whenever a movie says it's based on a true story, it usually isn't completely true. That's easy to forget when watching. We like to suspend our disbelief, and these movies present their stories with such matter-of-fact confidence that they must be truthful. I, Tonya is one of those movies, except that it plays with genre conventions to remind us that "based on a true story" doesn't mean "a true story.".

To that end, I, Tonya creates a mockumentary style. The camera is constantly moving during the action, as if someone else is there in the moment, but stays completely still during interview scenes. It also changes the aspect ratio whenever it cuts between reenacting Tonya Harding's infamous life story and interviews after the fact. Rather than interview the real-life figures involved, however, the actors simply put on more makeup to appear older, reminding you that this movie is technically fiction. Further undercutting the reliability of the narrators are the various filmmaking tricks used to mix up the action. Some interviews are played side by side. Others interrupt each other. Often, a character will narrate while reenacting. As sparse and uneven as these tricks are, they're meant to show the characters competing with each other to get their side of the story out. Sometimes, the events on screen actually happened, but sometimes, they didn't.

Still, as the title suggests, I, Tonya is Tonya Harding's story. Naturally, that means the movie takes her side more than anyone else. That creates a lot of blind spots, namely that Nancy Kerrigan is barely a character despite the film's events profoundly affecting her life, but it does create opportunities for excellent film-making, and the lengths gone to tell Harding's story are impressive. Each song featured is selected to reveal something about Harding's mindset in the moment. Though the film is shot on 35mm, film grain is barely noticeable except for scenes taking place in the skating rink. In those moments, the grain hints at the nostalgia Harding has for figure skating. When she is skating, the camera rotates against rather than with her movement, making her skating skills look even more quick and impressive. All of these techniques come together to make Tonya Harding the undisputed protagonist of the story, regardless of whether or not she may actually be the villain. It doesn't ultimately matter if she is, nor if the movie tells us not to trust it. Even if a story isn't true, us moviegoers want to believe it, anyways.