‘A Thousand and One’ Review: AV Rockwell Tells a Poignant Story About a Mother Trying To Keep Her Son By Her Side
The unbreakable bond between a mother and her son is almost impossible to describe with words, a relationship filled with as much frustration as love, and everything in between; so leave it to AV Rockwell to give it her best try in her feature debut A Thousand and One. That challenge alone was hard enough, but not for her: in addition to that, she also threw in a time capsule of what it was like growing up in Harlem in the 1990s and early 2000s. The film is a smash success.
Set in three different stages of young Terry’s life, in a similar structure to what Barry Jenkins pulled off so brilliantly with Moonlight, A Thousand and One starts its journey after Inez (a towering and heartbreaking Teyana Taylor) comes out of prison and tries to convince the people in her life that she’s changed and wants to spin things around. Her main target is her six-year-old son Terry, who is now living in the foster care system — though that will change soon, after Inez kidnaps him out of it and the two run out looking for a better life, while always looking over their shoulder, haunted by that decision for many years to come. And though Terry proves to be difficult to deal with at first, it’s clear that he needs a mother a lot more than he needs roof stability.
The film’s structure allows Rockwell to tackle different themes and aspects of being a Black mom in Harlem in the 1990s, when Mayor Giuliani threatened with life-changing improvements and Inez struggled with trying to put his life back together at 22 and with no one by her side other than a six-year-old kid. Her partner, nicknamed Lucky (William Catlett), joined the family soon after — though don’t cheer yet, since he’s not the kid’s father and he was initially reluctant to even look at Terry.
After fighting many battles inside and outside her home (apartment 10-01, which justifies the film’s title), Inez is finally able to settle down and start a modest life with her family. At that point, we time-jump into 2001 to tell a whole different aspect of raising a teenage boy whose brightness doesn’t fit into a Black school anymore, while trying for your husband not to run away every few weeks. And then, we move further into the future to tie it all together — but no spoilers there.
The heart and soul of the film is the troubled relationship between Inez and Terry, one in which they blame each other for their biggest failures in life, but hardly ever give credit for their highest moments. At the end of the day, though, no matter how much money they had in their wallets or who they spent their day yelling at, the two of them had a home to come back to. If the image that heads over this review (and is also the thumbnail of the film’s trailer) doesn’t single-handedly describe the emotional side of the film, there’s nothing I can say that will do it more justice.
Rockwell’s script is as ambitious in its setting and recreation of 1990s Harlem (you feel like you’re also on the street with the rest of the characters, breathing their air and being as stressed out yet marveled by the intersection of so many lives) as it is discreet in the actual story of the characters. That side of the storytelling feels shorthanded by everything else done in the film; after all, it’s not the first time we hear about some of the individual arcs that Inez goes through in this movie, and it’s not until the third act kicks in that we really start to delve on new ground. After all, most of what Rockwell does here, Moonlight did it first and arguably better (though not living up to one of the best movies of the 21st century is really no shame at all).
But it’s whenever A Thousand and One tries to break away from those Moonlight feels that it really starts to soar. Besides Rockwell’s direction, which is mostly focused on bringing the audience into these settings, from the crowded street to the characters’ most intimate moments, the film’s most important asset is Teyana Taylor’s performance. The actress, who delivered some of the best work of 2023, doesn’t even look like she’s acting. At times (also helped by Rockwell’s camera work) A Thousand and One almost feels like a documentary, with Taylor being a real-life struggling 22-year-old mother. She does have some loud moments, especially in the very first scenes of the film and the very last, but it’s in her quietest scenes that she ultimately triumphs.
The film is, without question, one of the best directorial debuts of the year (which has itself been filled with many great ones, including Celine Song’s Past Lives and Chloe Domont’s Fair Play). Rockwell’s sincere and heartfelt story about a mother and a son trying to stay together despite all the obstacles life throws their way is as intimate as it is poignant.
A Thousand and One is currently streaming on Prime Video in the US after it premiered in theaters in March, and is available to watch on PVOD in select territories worldwide.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
