I, Tonya

The decisive choice in Craig Gillespie’s 2017 film is who narrates. Screenwriter Steven Rogers interviewed Tonya Harding and her former husband Jeff Gillooly separately, found they remembered nothing the same way, and framed the film as a documentary so the verdict falls to the audience. That becomes structure. The same event is replayed according to whoever is speaking, characters turn to the camera mid scene to contradict what you just watched, and the film declines to rule at the end. The skating was assembled in three layers. Margot Robbie trained four months, Heidi Munger and Anna Malkova performed the hardest jumps, and since no double could land a triple Axel that shot was built in visual effects. Eight VFX moved Robbie’s head onto a double’s body across roughly two hundred shots, animating it by hand. Allison Janney won Actress in a Supporting Role. Margot Robbie for Actress in a Leading Role and Tatiana S. Riegel for Film Editing were nominated only. Nancy Kerrigan later said she had not watched it, and that her part in the affair was recovering from an attack. A good fit if you accept a film that never settles the case and only shows the seams between two incompatible accounts. Not for anyone who will struggle with domestic violence staged inside comic timing.