I, Tonya... A True American (Good, Good)

A couple weeks ago, I watched I, Tonya, by Craig Gillespie. In many ways, this was just another movie about a girl's journey to the Olympics. But after analyzing the film, I learned it was a much different type of film. The way Gillespie told Tonya's story was through multiple points of views and then he displayed a flashback. In the flashbacks and the interviews of Tonya, Gillespie really made her stand out as a dominant feature. Gillespie did this first by her costumes in her competitions. For example, Tonya always wore cheaper made costumes to competitions because she was poor. One of the themes of the film is that an athlete can come from any background and reputation. Compared to other girls Gillespie showed, Tonya was the direct opposite. On screen, she took up the most screen density to show her dominance. Meanwhile, the other competitors wore expensive, well-made costumes to show the audience that they were all wealthy and their overall classy style towards the sport. They were typically shot as subsidiary figures to help support the theme that a top athlete can come from anywhere.

Overall, I will give this movie a good good rating. Gillespie really outdid himself in this film. He was able to take an unclear story about Tonya Harding and he was able to get the truth, not by just interigating Tonya Harding, but by getting everyone's point of view and being able to mash them into the truth of the story. In stories that are so widely debated about what happened, being able to do this is rare. What I also loved about this movie was the ending. In my opinion, more movies should have endings like this. In the end, Tonya was never allowed to skate again and then became a boxer. As stupid as that sentence just sounded as to how the movie ended, its the truth. Gillespie didn't change her ending and make it a happy ending that everyone could live with. Gillespie told the truth of how Tonya ended up. His message was that not everyone is going to have a happy ending and that is totally ok. However, life according to Gillespie goes on with or without a happy ending. He believed as long as the truth was told, that could represent the ending. I liked that about this movie. It still is able to keep a firm touch on reality. I also liked the satire used in the film by Tonya on the views of becoming ice skating champions. However, I did not like how we do not know the ending for other characters besides Tonya because they all gave their point of view on everything in the film BUT the ending. I don't know if that was done purposely or not, but to me it was plain cruelty. Other than that, Gillespie really outdid himself and knew how to effectively work around bias and challenges of a highly debated story perfectly. Since I highly enjoyed it, it is a "GOOD GOOD" film.

"