[Image Source: Wikipedia]
is a troubling film … and not for just the obvious reasons. Yes, director Craig Gillespie’s take on the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan scandal does a good job highlighting America’s obsessive and misogynistic need to pit women against one another, regardless the tragic outcomes that may result. Yes, Steve Rogers’ script addresses the notion that competitive ice skating is a sport that often favors artifice over reality, faux-elegance over athleticism. The film nails the tragic economic disparity in this country that can toxify and curdle unfulfilled and unrecognized raw talent into resentment, rage, and unbridled violence.
Yet, it’s the film’s tone that I found most unsettling. There is probably no other way to go than “dark comedy” for an insane and still-somewhat-unresolved story like this: one skater from the “wrong side of the tracks” and one skater with a perceived “princess complex,” surrounded by a band of male idiots who thought it would be a nifty idea to turn the lead-up to the 1994 Winter Olympics (with an eventful stop at Detroit’s Cobo Hall) into a road-show Goodfellas as performed by the cast of Green Acres.
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
The cast is beyond reproach. Deserving Golden Globe winner Allison Janney (
Spy, Tammy, The Help) dazzles and horrifies as Tonya’s “mommie dearest” LaVona whose intentions may be noble but whose approach to child rearing is two shades to the right of the Marquis de Sade. Sebastian Stan (
Captain America: Winter Soldier, Logan Lucky) is perhaps a bit too pretty but nonetheless gives us a hauntingly comic portrayal of an abusive milquetoast in Jeff Gillooly. Ethereally engaging Julianne Nicholson (
August: Osage County) is suitably and allegorically icy as Tonya’s coach.
Of course, Margot Robbie (Suicide Squad, Wolf of Wall Street) rocks the title role. Robbie is an absolute firecracker of a performer, and, while exceptional as Harding, I’m not sure we’ve yet seen that one landmark career-making turn from her. I’m certain it’s on the horizon, but I, Tonya in its entirety doesn’t quite rise to the commitment of what Robbie is doing here.
I also admit that, while Robbie gets Harding’s swagger and little-girl-lost qualities just so, she doesn’t quite have the look. I, like most of America, have wearied of Amy Adams, but watching a documentary of Harding following the film, it was clear that Adams is more of a doppelganger for the troubled athlete.
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
And that brings me back to the film’s tone: a bit Coen Brothers (
Raising Arizona, Fargo), a bit Gus Van Sant (
To Die For), and a heaping helping of postmodern cynicism, but not nearly enough heart. The tragic circumstances of Harding’s upbringing are bandied about as cutesy one-liners, and the choreographed sequences of domestic abuse (Harding’s mother and husband both dish out brutal beatings on the poor soul) are almost treated like musical interludes. Even the heartbreaking yet admittedly hilarious lament from Robbie’s Harding that “I get hit every day, but Nancy Kerrigan gets hit once, and the whole world sh*ts!” comes off more like a punchline than an authentic assessment of America’s trivialization of violence toward women.
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
Perhaps I am overly sensitive in this moment of “#MeToo/#TimesUp. Perhaps I have seen too often how insidious and destructive the evil-that-men-do can be to the self-esteem and self-worth of women. Perhaps I just thought
I, Tonya was trying to have its cake and eat it too -painting Harding as this heartbreaking misunderstood ice queen Icarus while lobbing spitballs at the back of her head, just in case America wasn’t
quite ready to forgive her yet.
As Janney’s LaVona intones in one of the many “mockumentary” style interviews sprinkled throughout the film, “She [Tonya] skated better when she was enraged.” The film gives us an ugly, bruising, arguably self-indulgent depiction of why Harding should be and was enraged, but it is never quite brave enough to offer her much sympathy or redemption. That may be the saddest crime of all.
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Miscellany …
[Biber with – clockwise – Sexton, Rachel Biber, & Rebecca Winder]
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[Jaffe’s Vivian Hood pictured]
Latest Talk of the Town Whitley County “Old Type Writer” column by my mom Susie Sexton … is actually by me this month: my review of Greatest Showman. Thanks to publisher Jennifer Zartman Romano; proud to support my mom’s longstanding contributions there. ❤️ Excerpt: “This may seem a quaint notion, but sometimes it’s nice to have a movie that is simply affirming and joyous and a celebration of what can be best in the human spirit. That is The Greatest Showman’s raison d’etre. The subject of PT Barnum’s now-controversial life may seem an unlikely vehicle for such a film, but that is indeed what we have with Hugh Jackman’s latest. I absolutely loved this movie.” Click here.
[Musical director Kevin Robert Ryan and Sexton – photo by Denise Staffeld]
- Thanks, Jennifer Zartman Romano and Talk of the Town Whitley County, for running this announcement! Whitley County native Roy Sexton is among the cast of “Life is A Cabaret,” a live musical theatre fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. The performance is planned for February 7, 2018, at 7 p.m. in Canton, Michigan at Canton Village Theater. The live musical fundraiser will feature Broadway tunes. The event is hosted by Relay for Life in partnership with Women’s Life Society Chapter 827, Chicks for Charity. Attendees will enjoy delicious desserts from a Cold Stone Creamery ice cream bar while bidding on the silent auction. A cash bar will also be available. All proceeds and donations will benefit the American Cancer Society’s Relay For Life of Canton and Plymouth, MI to attack cancer from every angle. Tickets are $22. For ticketing information, click here or call 734-394-5300 ext 3. If there is no answer, leave a message and your call will be returned within 24 hours.
- Thanks, Legal Marketing Association, for this shout out in the latest Strategies magazine.
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[Image Source: Wikipedia]
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[Biber & Sexton, photo by Rebecca Winder]
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