Movie Review: 'A Thousand and One' is a Powerhouse Film

A Thousand and One (2023)

Directed by A.V Rockwell

Written by A.V Rockwell

Starring Teyana Taylor, Robert Catlett, Josiah Cross

Release Date March 31st, 2023

Published April 3rd, 2023

Nature or Nurture? How do we become who we are? The new drama, A Thousand and One isn't so much out to answer that question but it raises that question in a most compelling and beautiful way. The story of a fiercely protective mother and the baby she thought she'd lost to the system years earlier, A Thousand and One begs the question of identity while also revealing a pair of characters whose bond is tested and affirmed numerous times in ways most can never begin to imagine.

Fresh out of a stay in prison, Inez (Teyana Taylor) simply wants to get on with her life. A talented hairdresser, she'd be content finding a chair in a salon somewhere where she could rebuild her life. Unfortunately, things are rarely that easy, especially for someone emerging from a prison stay. Instead of a salon space, Inez finds herself begging people to let her do their hair while papering all of Harlem with offers to do hair that fall on the deaf ears of indifferent passersby.

While seeking work, Inez is struck by the sight of a small child. Terry or T, as Inez calls him, is certainly familiar with Inez and the way she speaks to him matter of factly seems to confirm their relationship. T is Inez's son, separated from her when she went to jail. Now out of jail, she sees him and though she seems to understand that she's in no place to try and take him back, she's eager to keep tabs. When Inez hears from one of T's friends that he was hurt and hospitalized, she goes to the hospital and there she makes a fateful choice.

An unknown amount of time passes as Inez and T couch-surf between extended family and friends until Inez gives up her salon dream, for now, to take a job working as a maid in a nursing home over an hour away by train. It's hard and long work but it's enough to find a place for her and T to live. That's when Inez reconnects with a man who may or may not be T's father. Lucky and Inez have a complicated history. He may or may not have been part of the reason she ended up in prison. He's also the only man Inez ever loved.

The push-pull of Inez and Lucky's relationship is deeply fraught, especially after Lucky bonds with T and becomes the closest thing to a father that T will ever know. Lucky will bounce in and out of their lives even after the couple get married. Settling down doesn't suit him and the tension boils over on several occasions before... well, you should see that for yourself. Lucky is a deeply complicated, flawed but loving character, loving in a way that he understands love, a love complicated by his own strange and fraught upbringing.

As for T, he grows up to be a sweet, deeply sensitive teenager. We will learn that education comes very easy to him but it's the only thing that comes easy for him. Desperately shy, he is isolated from most people and when he moves to a more advanced school, the racial divide only further isolates him. That's when secrets of the past emerge and somehow take an already difficult life and make it nearly impossible. These secrets regarding Inez's past are all well foreshadowed but nevertheless devastating in the hands of director A.V Rockwell and star Josiah Cross.

Forgive my pop psychology, which undeniably over-simplifies things, but we can see in the performance of Josiah Cross as teenage T, the roots of his insecurity and sensitivity. As a child, T had no security, especially after Inez was sent away. He was placed in an uncaring system that shuffled him from one vague adult authority figure to the next. He had no security, no foundation at a very early age and the result appears to be a deep seated insecurity that has permeated his young adult life. That isn't intended to justify what Inez does, stealing him away, kidnapping him. But, what Inez wanted to do was noble and well intended.

How the story of A Thousand and One is resolved is unexpected and sad but with just a tinge of hope. T is such a good person that you can't help but fear for him in a world where cruelty seems to seek victims like T, but as played by Josiah Cross, there is a fierce resilience that you can sense he has learned and adapted from Inez in their more than a decade together as mother and son. It's a powerhouse ending and a perfect coda for this incredibly emotional, thoughtful, and often harrowing film.

A Thousand and One was the drama feature winner at the Sundance Film Festival and it is easy to see why. The film is brutally effective, authentic and moving. It's built on the remarkable foundation of Teyana Taylor's award-worthy lead performance and anchored by Josiah Cross's sensitive, sweet, and smart performance. The relationship between mom and son is deeply fraught but the core is love, empathy, and dedication. It's in the way that someone dedicates themselves to someone else, for better or worse, that drives the big beating heart of A Thousand and One and makes it a must-see film.

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