In 2013 Martin Scorsese adapted a self authored memoir of a financial criminal into a frat house high energy drug induced film that we all adored. We laughed, gasped and at times hated ourselves. Every year since then there have been failures to imitate this film’s effects via having all blue collar characters who perform horrible actions but within the lines of the system we call society with all it’s good and bad elements. The films want us to sit there in a point of judgement and feel better about ourselves for not taking part in these actions and at the same time enjoy the thrill of how those characters roll around in the dirt and end up on the other side fighting tooth and nail in the ways we’ve not. Victim and perpetrator gets mixed up in ways that real life constantly does.

I, Tonya follows the professional — i.e. entire — life of Tonya Harding. From young she was brought up to be an exemplary figure skater and went on to represent her country in the Olympics. We watch on as her mother, played by Allison Janney, pushes her with “tough love”. We see as she accepts physical abuse from her now ex-husband, played by Sebastian Stan, at times for what she thought was love and at other times for effect. There are aspects of this movie which plays these all for laughs and other points where the film straight up isn’t having it.

This is the main point of the film that becomes questionable for me. I can accept whimiscal problematic social and moral issues in films about ficticious characters. This however is a film about a young girl who was pushed to be this great athlete to the point where she made some horrifying life decisions that took her down a path that is a tragedy if nothing else. However, in the end we’re seated watching a film about this tragedy and laughing. I found myself questioning what’s really funny? Is it that Tonya was gullible enough to be in this situation and she should’ve had enough strength and sense to not have idiots —  see Shawn, played by Paul Walter Hauser — ruin everything she had earned with that hard work? Is it just that this woman who had the talent and the skills to be that top performing athlete has fallen to the depths of having to sell her story in this manner that it’s now farcical to watch it all play out? Or is it just that she happened to be poor growing up and due to all of the above we are ok laughing?

The film contains a lot of acting talent that helps to make it into an awards friendly fodder that we will talk about. However, the ideas that the films flirt with makes me feel that the audience is meant to laugh at the demise of Harding and not with her looking back “fondly” at.

With The Wolf of Wall Street there are some bigger ideas towards the end of that film based on how Scorsese constructed the world of that character. There we feel like we’re laughing with Belfort, mainly because he’s okay years later and that was never in doubt due to his position in life.

With I, Tonya by the end of the film it’s hard not to imagine that Harding is nothing more than a punching bag, figuratively and literally, for our entertainment and that is possibly more effective than the movie itself.