I, Tonya (5 Stars)

True Stories #32

Name: Tonya Harding

Lived: 12 November 1970 – still alive

Film dates: 1974 to 2003, mostly 1985 to 1994

Film made in 2017

"There's no such thing as the truth. Everyone has their own truth".

I hate this quote, spoken by Tonya Harding at the end of the film. The nature of truth is an ages old philosophical concept. When Pontius Pilate spoke to Jesus Christ, he asked him "What is truth?" and Jesus didn't answer. Naively, I would say that truth is what really happened and what exists, but 20th Century philosophers have written endless books questioning this naive definition. The main argument against the definition is that it's a tautology. If truth is defined as what happened, the statement can be reduced to "Truth is truth". Philosophers prefer to define truth as what's perceived, so it's something subjective. That brings us back to Tonya Harding's words. Everyone perceives the truth differently.

Maybe we can better understand truth if we ask what the opposite of truth is. Most people would answer lies, but I don't believe it's that easy. There are also mistakes. Let me give a fictional case as an example.

Bill shoots Fred in front of Lucy. Betty is standing close by, looking in the opposite direction. Lucy pulls the gun out of Bill's hand to stop him shooting again.

1. Lucy says "Bill shot Fred".

2. Bill says "Lucy shot Fred".

3. Betty says "Lucy shot Fred".

Statement 1 is the truth, based on the naive definition that the truth is what really happened.

Statement 2 is a lie, because Bill is denying his guilt.

Statement 3 is a mistake. Betty turned round and saw the gun in Lucy's hand, so she assumed Lucy had just shot Fred.

Let's take this example a step further. Betty rings the police and tells them that Lucy shot Fred. Lucy is arrested, and in court she's found guilty, based on the testimony of the two witnesses, Bill and Betty. So the decision of the jurors, the judge and the whole legal system is that Lucy is lying, even though she's the only one who told the truth.

This started out as a simple example, but let's make it even more complicated. Lucy's lawyer tells her she has no chance of winning in court, so she should plead guilty to reduce her sentence. (In English law, pleading guilty reduces the sentence by 50%). So Lucy lies to the judge, saying that she shot Fred, and she only gets a 10 year sentence instead of 20 years.

Now nobody is telling the truth!

This simple fictional case now has implications, making it so complex that it could be the subject of a Philosophy PhD thesis.

There are other examples of truths and non-truths.

"God exists" vs "God doesn't exist".

Millions of people have been killed arguing over these statements.

"The Earth is flat" vs "The Earth is round".

This is a more difficult pair of statements, at least from a philosophical viewpoint. One of the statements is true, the other false, but most people have no way of proving what they say. They either rely on the proof of their own two eyes, or they accept the words of experts on faith.

Now for another example from my own past. In 1997 I decided to leave my wife. I explained my reasons, but she didn't understand them. I even gave her two weeks to change the way she was acting, but she didn't see any fault in herself. As far as she was concerned, I was leaving her for another woman.

About 10 years later she discovered that I'd had another girlfriend while we were separated. (There were actually several, but she only found out about one). That was all the proof she needed. Now she knew I'd left her for another woman. It was no good me telling her that the relationship didn't start until we were already separated.

The reconciliation with my ex-wife tentatively began sometime round about 2007. It culminated with me moving back in with her in 2016. I felt it was the right thing to do. The biggest problem is that after all this time she still doesn't know why I left her. She's told our children, her relatives and all her friends that I left her for another woman. She can't go back on it now. Three of our children believe her, one doesn't. Whenever I overhear her telling someone that I left her for another woman I tell her she's lying, although I know it isn't a lie. It's a mistake. It's a terrible mistake that she's unable to put right.

Now for the reason for Tonya Harding's words at the beginning of this post.

"There's no such thing as the truth. Everyone has their own truth".

The film is based on interviews with Tonya, her ex-husband, her mother and a few friends. Their stories don't agree. For instance, Tonya says that her husband Jeff was always hitting her. Jeff says that he never hit her, because he wasn't that sort of person. I know which one of the two I choose to believe. The film itself follows Tonya's version of the truth, but every time someone disagrees he faces the camera and says it happened differently.

The central point of the film is the incident on 6th January 1994, when Tonya's main rival, Nancy Kerrigan, was attacked and injured. Jeff tells the viewers that the incident is always different, depending on who's telling the story. Tonya didn't have to go to prison. She was given a ridiculously high fine, which she could only pay after appearing in a television news programme. The worst thing for her was that she was banned from professional skating for the rest of her life.

So she became a boxer.

This is an incredible film that grows on me every time I watch it. It was a big mistake not to include it in my top 100 films list. I've already made up my mind to start my new rolling top 100 list today. What I mean by rolling is that the list won't be fixed, it'll be regularly updated. I'll keep it online for my readers to check what I like most, but it can only be understood as a snapshot of what films I like most today, not what I'll like most next year, next month or even tomorrow.

Success Rate:  + 2.9

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