So, you have watched Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and thought that story was tough and Frances McDormand was terrific and nothing could ever be more tough and more terrific. Especially something with that hot blonde chick from The Wolf of Wall Street. Right? Wrong! So get ready for a big fat kick in the nuts, because sh!t has just got real.
From the very beginning of the film you realize that it won't be pretty. An abusive ever-smoking and ever-cussing mother who would rather wipe the floor with her daughter than say a nice word to her. So destructive that even her rifle-shooting husband loses it and flees leaving a poor child completely unprotected. And when it turns from verbal abuse to the physical one, by her mother, by her boyfriend and later her husband, it's clear that it's not just not pretty - it's damn ugly, and that it's gonna get even uglier still.
The trio of Margot Robbie, Sebastian Stan and Allison Janney does an unbelievable job of focusing a huge amount of anger, hate and frustration onto the single character, Tonya Harding, making almost every second of her screen time a pure pain to watch. You see her going through things you'd be waking in cold sweat from if you saw them in your dream. But, then again, for someone it was not a dream but an everyday routine. A vicious circle of abuse and humiliation, and the only way to forget it, even just for a minute, was through that ice rink, doing the only thing that would make you feel like something more than a pathetic loser with no single bright perspective ahead.
And with that ugliness comes the true power of this film, of Robbie's performance, and of the real Tonya. The power that channels all the hate she received from all around into the thirst for skating, as if that ice rink is your arena where you fight for your life - or die trying. And when it's your life at stake, things are never chivalrous or graceful - so the way the Hollywood sex symbol dies and gives birth to a relentless competitive monster is a true miracle. And, just like a miracle of a real birth, it's full of pain for both the participant and for the ones witnessing it.
What makes I, Tonya an even more shattering experience is that it's not just a made-up story, it's something that a living human being once went through. When you see her husband beat her and threaten her and even shoot a gun at her, you wish you could simply tell yourself that it's just cinema - but this time it's not quite so. When you see her mother come to her, pretending to be offering a helping hand when she's the most vulnerable - to end up being yet another vulture that came to feast on the prey that looks done but still keeps twitching - you wish you could say that no real child has come through such pain and betrayal, but you can't once again. You see a girl whose story was simply meant to be a tragedy from the very beginning - and you just wish it to be over. But she takes another hit, falls, yet for some reason refuses to stay on the floor.
I guess I realize why this film missed the Best Picture Oscar, just like Margot Robbie missed the Best Leading Actress one. Just like the real world Tonya who outskates her rivals but fails to meet the expectations about her presentation, this film is technically the most riveting and intense story this year, with the leading performance being a big shiny diamond of a masterpiece, twice as precious because it wasn't an established Oscar winner who delivered it but a girl who till now was the most famous for doing a full frontal nude shot a few years ago.
I'm not saying that the scores are rigged and that the competition was flabby. On the contrary, Three Billboards was a great film that I loved, and McDormand's performance is 100% Oscar worthy. The point is that I, Tonya is just not the image the Western cinematographic establishment is ready to associate women with yet - ugly and abused and blood-spitting. But, if in the figure skating world you could at least say that such are the house rules, and a pretty dress and a smile are something that matters at least as much as - if not more than - a triple axel, then the film industry community screaming "equal rights to women!" at every corner and not acknowledging the most glaring case of one woman, fighting for her right for her skills to be valued and for herself to be treated as a human being, and another woman, incarnating all that fight and suffering that comes with it on the screen, is pure hypocrisy. Inclusion rider or not.
From the very beginning of the film you realize that it won't be pretty. An abusive ever-smoking and ever-cussing mother who would rather wipe the floor with her daughter than say a nice word to her. So destructive that even her rifle-shooting husband loses it and flees leaving a poor child completely unprotected. And when it turns from verbal abuse to the physical one, by her mother, by her boyfriend and later her husband, it's clear that it's not just not pretty - it's damn ugly, and that it's gonna get even uglier still.
The trio of Margot Robbie, Sebastian Stan and Allison Janney does an unbelievable job of focusing a huge amount of anger, hate and frustration onto the single character, Tonya Harding, making almost every second of her screen time a pure pain to watch. You see her going through things you'd be waking in cold sweat from if you saw them in your dream. But, then again, for someone it was not a dream but an everyday routine. A vicious circle of abuse and humiliation, and the only way to forget it, even just for a minute, was through that ice rink, doing the only thing that would make you feel like something more than a pathetic loser with no single bright perspective ahead.
And with that ugliness comes the true power of this film, of Robbie's performance, and of the real Tonya. The power that channels all the hate she received from all around into the thirst for skating, as if that ice rink is your arena where you fight for your life - or die trying. And when it's your life at stake, things are never chivalrous or graceful - so the way the Hollywood sex symbol dies and gives birth to a relentless competitive monster is a true miracle. And, just like a miracle of a real birth, it's full of pain for both the participant and for the ones witnessing it.
What makes I, Tonya an even more shattering experience is that it's not just a made-up story, it's something that a living human being once went through. When you see her husband beat her and threaten her and even shoot a gun at her, you wish you could simply tell yourself that it's just cinema - but this time it's not quite so. When you see her mother come to her, pretending to be offering a helping hand when she's the most vulnerable - to end up being yet another vulture that came to feast on the prey that looks done but still keeps twitching - you wish you could say that no real child has come through such pain and betrayal, but you can't once again. You see a girl whose story was simply meant to be a tragedy from the very beginning - and you just wish it to be over. But she takes another hit, falls, yet for some reason refuses to stay on the floor.
I guess I realize why this film missed the Best Picture Oscar, just like Margot Robbie missed the Best Leading Actress one. Just like the real world Tonya who outskates her rivals but fails to meet the expectations about her presentation, this film is technically the most riveting and intense story this year, with the leading performance being a big shiny diamond of a masterpiece, twice as precious because it wasn't an established Oscar winner who delivered it but a girl who till now was the most famous for doing a full frontal nude shot a few years ago.
I'm not saying that the scores are rigged and that the competition was flabby. On the contrary, Three Billboards was a great film that I loved, and McDormand's performance is 100% Oscar worthy. The point is that I, Tonya is just not the image the Western cinematographic establishment is ready to associate women with yet - ugly and abused and blood-spitting. But, if in the figure skating world you could at least say that such are the house rules, and a pretty dress and a smile are something that matters at least as much as - if not more than - a triple axel, then the film industry community screaming "equal rights to women!" at every corner and not acknowledging the most glaring case of one woman, fighting for her right for her skills to be valued and for herself to be treated as a human being, and another woman, incarnating all that fight and suffering that comes with it on the screen, is pure hypocrisy. Inclusion rider or not.