A Thousand and One

 

Writer/director A. V. Rockwell

Rockwell on the set

A THOUSAND AND ONE       B+                                                                                          USA  (117 mi)  2023  d: A.V. Rockwell

Why you keep leaving me?                                                                                                               —Terry (Aaron Kingsley Adetola)

At a time when the history of people of color is being eliminated by the President of the United States, literally outlawing racial diversity while reinstating white supremacy in all levels of government, films like this tell an essential story, reminding us that in the history of American cinema, stories like this have NOT been told, and people like this have rarely, if ever, graced the screen.  Barry Jenkins’ Oscar winning film 2016 Top Ten List #1 Moonlight was among the first to be recognized for placing black stories into the mainstream of the American fabric, part of the collective consciousness of the nation, but this is an even more unorthodox subject matter, with the director describing this as a love letter to black women, somewhat reminiscent of Savannah Leaf’s urban drama Earth Mama (2023), which played at the Sundance Film Festival just two days before this one, both seared into our imaginations, where it’s extremely unlikely that many viewers actually grew up like the characters in this film, so the powerful message it sends couldn’t be more culturally significant.  Born and raised in Queens, New York, Rockwell attended film school at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where this first feature that she writes and directs won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2023, made in a social realist mode, set in New York in 1994, with an aerial view of the Twin Towers, jumping forward to 2001, and ends five years later, evoking very specific memories of growing up in New York City.  Taking us from Mayor Giuliani’s stop and frisk policy, which was basically an excuse for police to utilize racial profiling targeting blacks on the street, which was eventually ruled unconstitutional, to Mayor Bloomberg’s emphasis on urban renewal, shepherding in an era of unprecedented development, valuing developers and real estate profits over the lives of everyday citizens (Mike Bloomberg Created A Housing Crisis in New York ...), making rent unaffordable, causing inequality to flourish, driving many minority people from their homes, resulting in large numbers of children being raised in foster care or shelters.  This film addresses those essential truths, yet skillfully avoids long-held stereotypes, fictionalizing one dramatic scenario, intensely following the lives of Inez (singer/songwriter and choreographer Teyana Taylor) and her young son Terry, played by three different actors from ages 6 (Aaron Kingsley Adetola), 13 (Aven Courtney), and 17 (Josiah Cross).  Initially Inez is seen in Riker’s Island prison doing hair for other inmates, never learning how she landed there, and when she gets released she aggressively recruits new hairdressing customers on the streets, handing out homemade flyers to people on sidewalks and in stopped cars, hoping to jumpstart a new life.  Amidst the insecurity of having no real home, we see her bond with a young 6-year old child, seen playing on the streets unattended with other foster care kids, visiting him in the hospital after he injures himself attempting to escape from his foster parents, where it’s clear this is her son, but when he hurtfully asks “Why you keep leaving me?” A Thousand and One Movie Clip - Say Bye (2023) YouTube (1:44), she is heartsick at having to leave him once again, deciding then and there to snatch him away from “the system,” abducting him from the hospital to start a new life together, escaping to her childhood neighborhood in Harlem, literally going underground to avoid detection and arrest, changing his name, forging new documents, where both their lives are in complete turmoil.  “There’s more to life than fucked-up beginnings,” she says.  It’s a brave new world for both of them, together at last, but having nowhere to go.  Complications ensue. 

A whirlwind and multifaceted film that excels in expressing what’s unique about the black experience, with a musical score by Gary Gunn, where viewers are literally immersed in this world, with the streets of New York assuming the status of its own character, vividly recalling Kenneth Lonergan’s 2011 Top Ten Films of the Year #2 Margaret, offering a scathing depiction of a historically black neighborhood under siege by the police, presumably to make the city “safer,” routinely targeting young black men in what amounts to an abuse of power, before their inner-city neighborhoods are gentrified, driving ordinary families out of their homes, with black characters constantly feeling unwanted and unsafe.  The inhumanity of it all is difficult to comprehend, but when we feel it through the eyes of someone actually experiencing it firsthand, it’s something else altogether, more personal and relatable, as their perspective has been routinely silenced, yet this film offers a voice to the voiceless, becoming an eye-opening work that is elevated by this historical perspective, providing a generational portrait of absent fathers and disintegrated families that extends more than a decade, where the protagonists demonstrate what true survival means when there is no home and no idea about what it really means to find their own identity without one.  What’s immensely appealing about the performance of Teyana Taylor is her searing intensity, oftentimes seen in a rage of profanity, feeling helpless to stop the growing inhumanity that engulfs her, yet also having quiet, tender moments that allow us into her interior world.  The degree of complexity in the life of a single black mother, who is inevitably misunderstood and largely invisible to larger society, is what’s so essential about this film, where it’s hard not to be impressed by Taylor’s performance, so openly vulnerable, not always likable, with rough edges and emotional wounds exposed, flaws and all, yet there’s something about her steely resolve that’s just different from what we find in other films, as it’s more accurate, authentic, and psychologically astute.  While background information remains an open question, it’s implied that Inez lost her parents to the crack epidemic of the 1980’s, with next to nothing known about Terry’s father, who may be dead or in jail, but he’s certainly out of the picture, leaving her largely on her own to fend for herself, where putting the past behind her is an essential aspect of her mental stability, as it would be easy to get consumed by these harsh realities.  Her first stop when she gets out of prison is to a shuttered beauty shop, representative of all her hopes and dreams, where she literally has to claw her way back into the land of the living, finding few options open to her.  Using a street payphone (that has become obsolete in modern times), she calls upon her friend Kim (Terri Abney, from Jeff Nichols’ Loving, 2016) for a place to stay, but Kim’s mother (Delissa Reynolds), a kindly woman who welcomes Terry like one of her own, shows nothing but contempt to Inez, as trouble always seems to follow her, with a darker history between them implied, but not touched upon.  Instead Inez is in survival mode, desperate to find a job, which is even more difficult with a criminal background, yet persistence in the face of turbulence is part of her daily reality, having grown up in foster care where she was fending for herself by the time she was a teenager, determined to give Terry a better life, constantly reminding him, “I’ll go to war for you.”

Shot by Eric K. Yue, often moving from street-level action to overhead shots, with low-resolution archive footage adding a certain grit to the mix, where the time jumps are marked by inserted tracking shots over rows of houses and excerpts from mayoral speeches, as news broadcasts warn viewers of the increasing dangers of the Mayor Giuliani years, with explicit reference to the NYPD’s Assault of Abner Louima and the murder of Guinean student Amadou Diallo, where so much violence is directed towards the vulnerable, the marginalized, and the immigrant community, part of the socioeconomic distress put on black New Yorkers at the turn of the millennium.  Something of a counterpoint to Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989) or his messy but deeply personal family drama CROOKLYN (1994), Rockwell’s pacing, adroitly moving through different time periods, creates unfiltered emotional jolts, especially as Terry ages, which viewers experience exactly as he does, like when he suddenly meets Lucky (William Catlett), the new man in Inez’s life, also sharing a criminal background, something not easily overcome, but Terry (Aven Courtney) gives them reason to, A THOUSAND AND ONE - "How We Met" Official Clip - Only In ... YouTube (1:54), both seeing a version of themselves in him, growing up in the same way, offering him a life they never had, and he makes the best if it, viewed as quiet, thoughtful and introspective, succeeding in school despite all the distractions.  Lucky moves in and out of their lives, A Thousand and One Movie Clip - Show Up For Me (2023) YouTube (1:40), apparently balancing multiple relationships, where one of his other kids lives across the street with his own mother, but this never pushes the envelope into melodrama, remaining free of histrionics while still carrying considerable dramatic weight, with Inez insisting “Damaged people don’t know how to love each other.”  A fiercely protective Inez and Terry are always at the center of the picture, where she has to contend with the fact that she never gets the life she wanted, always craving something more, but doubts creep in, where we hear her concerns, “I keep feeling like something’s going to happen.”  The title of the film refers to the number of the apartment they live in, where an early hint that trouble lies ahead comes in the form of a new white landlord, who promises major improvements that will never come, but this is the lure of gentrification, which can only kick in, supposedly, if they leave the apartment altogether, using a bait and switch technique where minor repairs turn into an uninhabitable mess, with repairmen expediting their departure by leaving her apartment without a working bathroom, so it eats away at them, like a horror film, exactly as it does for their long-neglected neighborhood, where this rampant gentrification, another name for displacing people of color, is at the core of the changes taking place in Barry Jenkins’ Medicine for Melancholy (2008), examined in even greater detail in the fascinating documentary by Frederick Wiseman, In Jackson Heights (2015), where in the course of a few years the entire fabric of a neighborhood can disappear altogether in the name of progress.  Featuring an impressive build to a powerful climax, this film is largely open-ended, with a stream of different interests coming to light, as Terry (Josiah Cross) grows into a young man, seeing things finally through his own eyes, where some of his questionable decisions are hugely impactful, causing Inez to remark, ”I love you a whole lot, but I’m really starting to not like you,” just a stunning admission for a mother to make towards her son, but the combustible world we have been living through leaves no easy answers, which is part of the beautiful mystery of the film. 

Loving

LOVING           B                 

USA  Great Britain  (122 mi)  2016  ‘Scope  d:  Jeff Nichols

An understated, restrained, and achingly sorrowful depiction of the real-life story of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple that got married in Washington D.C. in 1958 only to be arrested after they returned home to Central Point, Virginia for violating the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia that had outlawed interracial marriage since slavery days.  Actually, the first law banning all marriage between whites and blacks was enacted in the colony of Virginia in 1691.  Though slavery was abolished in 1865, interracial marriage remained illegal in all the former states of the Confederacy 100 years later and was not amended until a Supreme Court decision on behalf of the Loving’s in 1967, though two states, South Carolina and Alabama refused to amend their state Constitutions until majority voter referendums passed in 1998 and 2000 respectively.  Much like 2015 Top Ten List #6 Carol from last year, this film underplays a significant shift in social consciousness by eliminating any hint of dramatic excess or melodrama, instead accentuating how connected they are to the rural soil and to one another, where whatever drama exists is the ordinary fabric of their everyday lives.   Unlike the director’s previous work Midnight Special (2016) that featured the supernatural, this film thrives on a universal human characteristic that we all share in common, the capacity to love.   Easily the least controversial and most conventional of all his films, the low key nature of the drama is surprising, especially considering the radical significance of the subject, where unfortunately films about social change have to be presented with kid gloves so as not to offend anyone.  That excessive degree of restraint may be the film’s undoing.  By focusing on establishing a rhythm of life that becomes ordinary and routine, where this couple could just as easily have been anyone, yet their nobility and inherent goodness rise above the prejudices of the time, while so much about them feels overly generic.   

To say the least, it is highly unusual for a white man in the 1950’s to so completely embrace black culture with so few questions being asked.  Yes, it does happen in the music business, especially with a lone white among jazz artists who are primarily black, and who’s to say it doesn’t happen elsewhere?  Except for a single scene, where Richard is confronted by an inebriated black friend that reminds him whites always have an escape route from being black, an avenue blacks will never have, there is otherwise no discussion on the matter.  It’s hard to believe there wouldn’t have been plenty more altercations among both races where they would be forced to defend their actions, where some among them would be disenchanted.  Richard’s mother at one point says he never should have married “that” woman, but that’s the end of it.  The film doesn’t delve into any of those kinds of all-too human frustrations, so it feels like the couple exists in a vacuum.  As it turns out, when one examines the history of mixed-race descendants from Virginia (Loving v. Virginia and the Secret History of Race - The New York Times  Brent Staples, May 14, 2008), it was common practice for Virginia slave owners, including Thomas Jefferson, to father biracial children with their slaves, where “many of the mixed-race men and women of Caroline County settled in and around Central Point…it was a visibly mixed-race community since the 19th century, (and) was home to a secret but paradoxically open interracialism.” Leading up to the 1950’s, often indistinguishable from whites, many biracials passed as whites in schools, movie theaters, restaurants, and even the armed forces in order to avoid segregation laws.  Some moved away and married into white families, while others had their birth certificates corrected to list them as white.  So what the film doesn’t point out is by the time Richard Loving, who was white, met Mildred Jeter, who was black and Cherokee, at a rural farmhouse juke joint playing bluegrass music, violating Jim Crow laws in that county was already an established practice.     

That being said, the film does contain the meticulous detail found in the director’s other films, including powerful performances by the lead characters Richard (Joel Edgerton) and Mildred (Ruth Negga), where these two are right at home in the rural farmlands and fields where they grew up, where neither one talks much, expressing themselves with as few words as possible, yet both are direct and sincere, where their feelings for one another are never in doubt.  Richard is a bricklayer by trade, but a genius at fixing car engines, where his weekend hobby is hanging out with a group of blacks who fleece whites out of their money in local drag races.  Some of the underlying white resentment is hinted at, both in losing their money and in watching a white guy so nonchalantly kissing a black woman in public, where someone holding a grudge against the couple likely complained to the sheriff, but nothing more becomes of it.  The couple is quickly married after learning Mildred is pregnant, with Richard buying a plot of land not half-a-mile from where Mildred grew up where he intends to build her a house, but they are arrested by a local sheriff (Marton Csokas) and his men in the middle of the night for violating anti-miscegenation laws that forbid blacks and whites from living together in marriage.  Accentuating the racial disparity of the law, Richard is released after a single night, while history records show Mildred spent five nights in a rat-infested cell before they allowed her release.  On the advice of local attorney (Bill Camp), they can avoid jail time only by pleading guilty, but they will be banned from living in the state of Virginia for the next 25 years.  With heads bowed, they agree to the court’s draconian rules, moving to Washington, D.C. into the home of one of Mildred’s cousins, Laura (Andrene Ward-Hammond), a row house in an all-black part of the city, where both are keenly aware that they’re living in substandard housing in a neglected neighborhood.  As the Civil Rights movement is growing, including the infamous 1963 march on Washington, the site of Rev. Martin Luther King’s “I Had a Dream” speech, it’s Laura who tells Mildred, “You need to write Bobby Kennedy and get you some civil rights.”

Uncomfortable in the city, where she misses her family, especially how close she is with her sister (Terri Abney), eventually having three kids, Mildred feels they’re cramped and cooped up all the time, as they have no room to run around and play, so she does write a letter to Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who refers the case to the Washington branch of the ACLU, where she’s contacted by Bernard Cohen (Nick Kroll) and constitutional law expert Phil Hirschkop (Jon Bass), who agree to represent them free of charge.  What’s difficult for them to understand is how they have to lose all the lower court rulings in order for the case to be heard before the Supreme Court, a process that takes nearly a decade, where they grow weary and disheartened along the way, where Richard often has to drive up to another state to find work, often returning home long after the kids have gone to bed.  Richard is openly suspicious of the lawyers, not really understanding the process, while Mildred develops an appreciation for the fact that you have to lose the smaller battles in order to win the war.  As the case draws nearer the federal courts, the lawyers try to gain exposure for the case by sending a Life magazine photographer to visit them in 1965, with Michael Shannon playing the photographer Grey Villet, known for using natural light and for refusing to stage his subjects, and while only three photographs were published in the magazine, he took more than 70 photographs.  Much of the film’s narrative mirrors those historic photographs which were shown in Nancy Buirski’s documentary film THE LOVING STORY (2011).  Photography played a large part of the Civil Rights struggle, communicating a sense of urgency to people all around the world, much of it displaying a hostile reception by police and local bystanders greeting the peaceful protest demonstrations, depicting violence and hate, while the images of the Loving family show precisely the opposite.  As low key and unobtrusive as this soft-spoken family chose to be, it’s hard to understand how the State of Virginia could actually claim they threatened “the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth.”  Never seeing themselves as champions of civil rights, instead coming from humble origins, they don’t even attend the Supreme Court hearing when invited, where the muted style of the film does allow viewers to share moments of intimacy with this family, as if we are part of their world, allowing us to observe history as it happens.