I, Tonya and the rigged world of competetive skating

The Tonya Harding biopic, I, Tonya, gives us a good sense of the competitive world of Olympic figure skating but, more so, of the troubled life of the oft-maligned Harding - raised by an cruel, bitter, violent mother (her sympathetic father left the family when TH was a child and seems to never have appeared again in her life) and married far too young to a violent and abusive husband. The movie, narrated by actors playing the principals in present day, so as to give the effect of a documentary, of course centers on what the characters call "The Incident," the famous attack by a hired thug on her skating rival, Nancy Kerrigan (who has virtually no role in the film). The facts of the badly blundered attack are pretty well known, but the account in the film, in which we see the complete idiocy of her husband and his so-called friend and Tonya's apparent body guard, Erich, are hilarious - stupidity of such magnitude that we wouldn't believe it were it not based on fact. TH was no angel or innocent, but we come away from the film with great sympathy for her and with a more firm conviction that the world of skating has for a long time been rigged to steer the awards and honors to those who have the proper look, demeanor, attitude, backing, and sponsorship; TH was an outsider from the start who refused to conform and who did little to help herself; it's amazing she got as far as she did, on her abilities alone.