Every artist—every painter, every filmmaker, every author or playwright, every actor, every sculptor or designer—will tell you the same thing: art uncovers truth.
What good is a piece of art if it doesn’t tell you something about the artist’s world, their perspective, their ideals? What good is art if it doesn’t express something that someone can grab hold of and keep as truth in their hearts?
But “I, Tonya” is a little different. The film takes several perspectives and mashes them together to uncover not the truth, but the characters’ hopes for the truth. The film follows the story of Tonya Harding, a competitive figure skater in the early 1990s whose career ended abruptly after the 1994 Olympics.
Tonya (Margot Robbie) is a redneck, rough-and-tumble kind of girl. She has stood out like a sore thumb since she was 4 years old, when her mother (Allison Janney) strong-armed her into a skating class meant for pre-teens. Dropping out of high school to compete, her life became a breeding ground for... keep reading on the burg!
The film does an excellent job of revitalizing the gray areas that this event left for the mouths of the feeding public. While they are still very much left gray, they will certainly force you to pause and think. “I, Tonya” is a film to bump to the top of your watching list this Oscars season. It plays soon at Midtown Cinema.