Pieced together by various interviews of people in Harding’s life, “I, Tonya” (Craig Gillespie, 2017) features Margot Robie in a tour de force number as Harding. The film feels like a documentary that traces the rise and fall of one of ice skating’s most legendary and notorious figures.
Consistently abused since childhood – verbally, emotionally, and physically – Harding began ice skating at a very young age. Her amazing talent on ice earned the attention of the public, and soon she was making waves within the competitive ice skating circuit.
Her early triumphs came at a cost – with her overbearing mother always by her side, Harding’s childhood along with all its attendant normalcy swept past her. As a teen, she fell in love with a guy who physically assaulted her. She ended up marrying him. The sordid details of Harding’s personal relationships with her mother and husband clouded what would otherwise be a sterling career as a professional ice skater.
Harding will always be remembered as the first woman to complete the triple axle on the ice rink – a difficult skill that until her own successful attempt was thought of as a move that was impossible to pull off.
But Harding was unlike any other professional female ice skater. Her sassy demeanor, her esoteric choice of music, her problematic relationships, and her larger than life personality did not represent the ideal type of female ice skater that judges wanted to project to the world. She was a bad ass, an unpredictable athlete who swore a lot, one who harbored no hesitation in expressing her thoughts and sentiments without feeling guilty about it at all.
As a professional ice skater, she rose to incredible heights, having made it to the Olympics twice. She failed to secure a podium finish on both accounts, with the final one serving to nail her professional career for good.
Harding’s swift fall from grace came when she was indicted for her alleged involvement in the injury of a fellow competitive ice skating colleague’s knee. The film traverses this aspect of Harding’s life in a tense fashion, trailing her and husband Jeff and his cohorts from the hatching of a seemingly innocuous plan to scare a fellow competitor to its eventual devolution into a much-publicized assault case.
On account of her alleged involvement in this messy incident, Harding was banned for life, never allowed from ever joining competitive ice skating again. That was in the early 1990s. In the 2000s, she made a comeback, this time as a professional boxer. Things didn’t pan out as planned.
As an incredibly talented athlete, Tonya Harding had the world on its knees. But the film, with its gritty cinematography and raw screenplay, tells us the world wasn’t ready for someone like her just yet.