I saw both Molly’s Game and I, Tanya today – and both are brilliant and both will be written about a lot. So this isn’t a review of either but some notes on both.
I have zero idea of what is or is not “the truth” in either movie and in the case of one of them it doesn’t even claim to be the truth or even based on the Truth.
I. They are both the exact same movie – Molly’s Game portrays money and power and luck and justice from the point of view of a woman from an upper class, beautiful, super smart family with a father that raises her like life is a war and it is all about money and power and luck and race.
I, Tanya is the Bizarro version of it. It’s about a lower class, not beautiful (but of course played by a beautiful actress all Best Actress Oscars go to beautiful actresses playing un-beautiful women, and Margot Robbie will probably win for this), uneducated woman, with a hyper competitive mother who raises her daughter the exact same way; that life is war and all about money, luck, genetics, beauty, men and power.
In one a judge is arguably rightly super lenient; in the other the judge may likely be way too severe. It all depends on what is and isn’t true and you can never really know how much of either is actually factual, but if you want history, which is written by the winners as Alex Haley despairingly wrote at the end of Roots and was also said by many others including Churchill, you want Aaron Sorkin writing your story. He made me go from hating Molly Bloom for wasting my money on her book to explaining why it sucked and making her look like a hero who had utmost integrity, which I would have guessed was impossible.
When it comes to screenwriting about complicated subjects that require tons of research; has a political slant; comes off as super educated and correct; there is no screenwriter in the history of film that can do it better than Sorkin when he has enough time to do it.
Tarantino and Mamet’s language is brutal and flashy. William Goldman is a genius. I know all the other names, but if Sorkin has enough time, and you need someone to make you look like a noble hero in a intellectual and dramatic way? If I have to go to war I would choose Sorkin to write my version. Second place is probably JFK’s unbelievable speechwriter Ted Sorenson.
II. Molly’s Game is the best movie ever written about poker and it isn’t even a poker movie.
III. If you accept the possibility that Tanya Harding didn’t know that her moron abusive husband and crew were going to do what they did, which is a huge if and even the movie says it has no idea. It credibly argues that the one who most got fucked in that imbroglio is Harding and that’s amazing if you lived through it.
IV. Ice skating is not a real sport. Nothing that relies on judges is an actual sport even boxing with the exception of knockouts. Poker is perhaps the most punishing sport of all and no other sport keeps track of the winners and losers as effectively. I used to work for a rich securities trader and he said all of life was a game, but his kept score with cash and that is the most reliable indicator of victory.
V. In only 5 seconds, I remembered how attracted to Katarina Witt I was over 20 years ago.
VI. The notion that even art is war I think I really made well in my review of Whiplash. Please read it if you have time.
VII. I, Tonya probably spent the GNP of some countries on the rights to the music it uses in the film.
VIII. Life in America may vary according to your political or philosophical views, but the most hyper-competitive industry in the entire world, bar none is Hollywood. It may have all been ripped off from people of other lands and races. You may hate the way they treat men or women. You may hate their political slant. You may be a snob and talk about your love for Kurosawa, which may or may not exist, but if you are talking about pure, uncorrupted, unfettered, capitalistic competition. America’s only real claim to the notion of exceptionalism is the fact that we turn out the best movies, music, and TV, and it’s not even close as to who comes second.
