By: Kimberly Grant
On first glance, you can tell that A Thousand and One is going to be a serious movie. After all, it won the Grand Jury Prize for the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.
A Thousand and One will be in theaters on March 31.
Written Component
Starring Teyana Taylor as Inez de la Paz, A Thousand and One, on the surface, is about a mother fighting to keep her family together while surviving the harsh realities of life. Looking deeper, Inez is a broken woman whose need to survive with her son becomes her main priority above being happy. Inez is an aspiring hairdresser with the skills and dream to own her own shop. She also needs a course of mental help.
In the harsh streets of New York City, Inez can’t get what she needs. So, like many women, she puts all of her hopes and dreams into her son, Terry (Aaron Kingsley Adetola, Aven Courtney, and Josiah Cross). Written and directed by A. V. Rockwell with Lena Waithe as one of the producers, A Thousand and One is a heart-breaking story. Unfortunately, in the hands of Rockwell, the story feels unfinished. Without ruining the ending, let’s just say Rockwell could have added more content to finish the story.
Talent Components
Taylor is the type of celebrity that most people would love to hate. Her celebrity persona is that of someone who is loud, obnoxious, and just wants to be seen. The good news for her career is that she puts aside that public persona to become Inez. Taylor’s performance plays nicely with Adetola, who plays a 6-year-old Terry. Adetola has the presence of an innocent child who hasn’t been corrupted by society, which should be a given. However, child actors these days are so present and advanced that you forget they’re children. Not so with Adetola. You just want to wrap your arms around him.
The other talented actor in this film is William Catlett as Lucky. Lucky is Inez’s boyfriend/husband who is trying to stay out of trouble after recently being released from prison. At first, Catlett’s Lucky seems untrustworthy to the audience. Thankfully, Rockwell wrote him as a character with a good heart and allows the audience to get past, well, his criminal past.
With a sigh, I write that the same praise cannot be given to the actors who play 13-year-old and 17-year-old Terry (Courtney and Cross, respectively). The casting of these two men is questionable. They look nothing like Adetola or each other. Their performances are either too subdued to be called a performance or way too overtop to be called acting. Thankfully, their parts are short in the film.
The Things We Don’t Talk About
The basic plot of A Thousand and One is that Inez is recently released from a one-year stint in prison and has decided to get her life together. She starts by trying to stay out of trouble. But she somehow flirts with trouble when she decides to kidnap her son Terry and move him from Brooklyn to Harlem. Why she only moved one borough away is beyond me. And, the title of the film isn’t really mentioned in the movie. If you plan on seeing the film, just know that you will still be confused about the title when you leave the theater. Which brings me to my next issue with this film.
The plot starts strong and gets very weak toward the end of the film. We start off wanting to root for Inez as she removes Terry from a bad foster care situation. When Inez proves that she needs anger management classes, we the audience still try to root for her. Because this type of story usually involves a character learning big life lessons and being all the better for it. Not so with A Thousand and One. No spoiler alerts! However, I will just say that the ending of this film felt unfinished and no one seemed to have learned any lessons.
Holistically, A Thousand and One not only gives a face to a woman who breaks the law for seemingly the right reason. There’s also social commentary. The film’s setting spans from mid-1990s to early 2000s NYC; which is before and during the gentrification of Harlem. The effects of it are a story within the story. Too bad Rockwell didn’t just come out and say it: developers pushed out the black residents of Harlem to make room for the new white residents. Tactics that were used included destroying kitchens and bathrooms so that rented apartments would be rendered uninhabitable.
A Thousand and One Fans Minus One
While I’m not this film’s biggest fan. I can say that A Thousand and One is still a fitting end to Women’s History Month 2023.
If you’re wondering about the types of movies I like, you can read my other reviews in my Entertainment Blog section.
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