A Thousand and One

A woman is released from Rikers Island prison in New York in 1994 after doing time for a theft charge. Inez, played by Teyana Taylor, is a hair stylist trying to scrape by in Brooklyn. One day she sees a 6-year-old boy and approaches him. He is silent and reserved. It’s her son Terry, who entered a foster home when she went to jail. Inez discovers that he is unhappy in the foster family, and decides to somehow get him out and have him live with her.

The movie is A Thousand and One, the remarkable debut feature by A.V. Rockwell that won the grand prize at Sundance last year. Let me preface what I’m going to say by noting that whoever put together the preview for this film stuck all the high note drama together in the trailer, which made it look like a big loud melodrama about the triumph of the human spirit. I guess that sells tickets—I’m not sure. But A Thousand and One is in fact a carefully measured, well-written, and beautifully paced drama about people that seem as real as life.

Inez does eventually spirit her young son Terry out of the foster home where he’s being neglected. She concocts a new name and history for him so that Child Protective Services won’t discover what happened. And then the movie covers the next twelve years of their life together, years of struggle and endurance.

Terry, who is played by three different young actors at ages 6, 13, and 17, remains quiet and insecure, while his mother seems like a whirlwind, a force of nature, pushing him to get his education and become somebody. Mother and son are not at all idealized. Inez is moody, erratic, and controlling. She cuts corners. Terry never acts like the sweet optimistic kid that we usually get in movies. He’s troubled, and never seems less than authentic. An ex-boyfriend nicknamed Lucky, played by Will Catlett, moves in. He is not idealized either. He’s neither an abusive stepfather, nor a sensitive caregiver, but a complicated person with a history. That’s one reason this film is so good. Rockwell writes nuanced characters instead of types. The context is straightforward—the environment of black people and their communities in New York, which includes an ever-present awareness of oppression, as well as pride and steady resolution.

This is a powerful performance by Teyana Taylor as Inez. I had not been previously aware of her. She’s also a singer-songwriter, and apparently a fashion icon. Judging by this film, she’s also an excellent actor. She shows us subtle changes in her character developing through the years. The youthful recklessness becomes tempered, motherhood makes her toughness more authentic, yet she’s essentially the same woman. It turns out that she has some secrets that lend her character an almost tragic dignity.

While the charcters’ life stories go on, Rockwell—a New York City native—also provides an oblique history documenting the deteriorating state of New York City, and Harlem in particular, up to 2005. Inez’s landlord, instead of repairing her apartment, tries to push her out so he can “gentrify” his building.

A Thousand and One is Inez’s apartment number—actually 10-01, but the dash, for some reason, has been stolen. Maybe it hints at the number of challenges she and her son must face to survive—or the stories that she, like Scheherazade, must tell. The movie invites us to witness the difficult truth.