A Thousand and One

A Thousand and One

A.V. Rockwell’s “A Thousand and One” was the shocking winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance a couple months ago; this is the award that went to movies like “CODA” and “Whiplash” in previous years. Although other films were considered frontrunners, it seems as though Rockwell’s heartfelt drama won because of its central performance and given how good Teyana Taylor is in this movie, that still counts as a breakout. It’s one of the best performances of the year so far, one of those turns where you have to remind yourself that you’re watching an actress she fades into the character completely, a woman who makes some tough choices while trying to protect her son.

Taylor has an uncanny ability to be present in a scene, responding as if she’s interacting for the first time rather than reciting rehearsed lines or hitting blocked movement; she’s reactive in ways that often go unencouraged by other performers. This organicity works wonders with a script that has quite a few structural problems and wages credibility-bending war on itself during its final act; by then, Taylor is so good that you don’t really care. You’re too invested in her story.

When we meet her, Inez (Taylor) is returning to New York from Rikers Island; she lives there now. Only 22 years old, Inez carries herself with such a sense of purpose not just someone who knows what she wants out of life but someone who already knows what it takes to survive this world. What it takes more than anything is Terry (Aaron Kingsley Adetola/Aven Courtney/Josiah Cross), her son; for his entire life six-year old Terry has been stuck in foster care while his mom was locked up.

So when he gets hurt somehow and winds up hospitalized, Inez makes the bold decision (or maybe not so bold, given the circumstances) to take him home. Who could possibly do a better job raising this kid? And what’s one more child from a broken system anyway a system that broke Inez as well?

She does make him change his name and tell nobody about where he comes from, though; you know how it is. But even still, “A Thousand and One” is not really a thriller. There’s something else going on here besides suspense. Terry has something in common with his mother, and this secret becomes the one thing that holds them together as their city shifts around them over the course of the ‘90s.

Sound bites and news items are frequently employed by Rockwell to establish NYC energy at this time and to comment on gentrification in Inez’s neighborhood; she may be made into a survival story protagonist by acting as its steady axis amid chaos whirling past her she doesn’t have the luxury of being on set somewhere while everything blurs by.

Inez eventually marries a man named Lucky, played by William Catlett. However, the movie spotlights the Inez/Terry combination; thereby giving the conventional mother/son drama a fresh shape that brings out how fast it could be taken away. Without turning it into a category piece, Inez’s decision and Terry’s secret create symbolic urgency in their relationship.

Each mother is worried about losing her son to violence or tragedy, but Inez has to bring up hers in an environment where this threat is more proximate. We have come across many stories about single mothers who prevail over hardships but what makes narrating here interesting again is that we are able to feel for Inez as she goes through hard times which later affect Terry’ view of life.

The truth of much of this collapses for me in one last act that I’m not convinced the film needs. Without giving anything away there is another secret in Inez and Terry’s life that will recon textualize everything before it, and I think the choice in story pushed me out from something so intimate feeling for so long. This movie doesn’t need a twist ending; it has done so much work to make these people feel real splash of cold water reminding us this is still a melodrama maybe always was. Those final moments become manipulative in a way that is rare for most of its runtime.

However Teyana Taylor holds her head high throughout all of this. Even as the film falls apart around her narratively speaking she’s not playing a character she becomes them force of nature personified more than any other actor on screen with her at any given time. She understands women like this need their sons to survive just as much if not more than they do themselves.

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