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. 

Motherless Brooklyn

  

Writer/director Edward Norton shooting on the streets of New York City

 
 

MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN                      B                    

USA  (144 mi)  2019  d:  Edward Norton                  Official site

Words rush out of the cornucopia of my brain to course over the surface of the world, tickling reality like fingers on piano keys.  Caressing, nudging.  They’re an invisible army on a peacekeeping mission, a peaceable horde.  They mean no harm.

―Motherless Brooklyn, by Jonathan Lethem, 1999

A hugely ambitious project that some are calling a vanity project, but that diminishes the audacious hutzpah it takes to make a film like this, more of a labor love that borders on greatness in terms of the reach and scope of its efforts, as it attempts to be Roman Polanski’s CHINATOWN (1974) for New York City, but ends up being considerably less, though just as Jake Gittes uncovered the secrets of the power brokers behind the Los Angeles water supply, another private eye is searching through the recorded deeds to find who’s behind the changing shape of New York City, as neighborhoods are victimized by ambitious city projects that require massive relocation.  Written, acted, directed, and produced by Norton, this is something that’s been in the works for twenty years, buying the rights to Jonathan Lethem’s 1999 novel just a year after his spectacular breakout performance in the film AMERICAN HISTORY X (1998), but then holding onto it, waiting for the right opportunity, which apparently happened with the election of Trump, the ultimate New York City insider who knows where all the bodies are buried.  The gist of the novel is a private eye with Tourette’s syndrome, which means he has uncontrollable outbursts of profanity, or an inexplicable string of words that come flying out of his mouth along with accompanying tics and grotesque body movements than can be terribly off-putting, with the novelist staying inside his head, getting carried away with this wondrous assault of language, while making something poetic from the profane.  Onscreen it takes some getting used to as it’s discomforting and not at all pleasant, where he smokes marijuana to help him relax and calm the nerves, yet it’s an oversimplification to think this is some kind of narcissistic showpiece for Norton’s acting talents, as the film itself is a wildly convoluted and enthusiastic ride throughout, offering plenty of New York flavor eye candy along with some terrific performances, where there’s a wealth of fireworks to appreciate, not the least of which is the densely impactful storyline that only gets more intriguing.  Norton shifts the story from the contemporary setting of the 90’s to the 50’s, digitally resurrecting Penn Station (now demolished), accentuating a film noir era with fedora hats, vintage cars, and old-fashioned detective work which inevitably includes mysteriously difficult puzzles to solve, spending the majority of time searching for the missing pieces, allowing viewers to play along, like a blown-up game of Clue.  A running joke throughout is just how easily one finds parking spaces, an impossibility in the city as currently constructed, suggesting a nostalgic look back to simpler times.  But what it also reveals is the inside political realm of running a big city, exposing “the true meaning of power,” all the lies and dirty secrets, corrupt appointments, missing bodies, and overall shenanigans it takes to make the public believe some fairy tale while secretly behind-the scenes raw power ruthlessly does what it wants, usually crossing the lines of morality and lawful activity, shortcutting the rules in order to make things happen now, demolishing anyone or anything that stands in their way, all in the name of progress.

Lionel Essrog (Norton) flinches and grimaces as words inexplicably race out of his mouth with an uncontrollable gush of words, but in this film, New York City is such an energized world with so much activity that people barely notice, as it’s all part of the city’s eccentric personality, unique and distinctive.  But while we witness this grotesque display of awkwardness, Lionel is narrating the story in a calm and reassuring voice, coolly describing what’s happening, as Lionel works for Frank Minna (Bruce Willis), who runs an old-school detective agency, who’s viewed as more than a friend, offering support to Lionel early on when he was in an abusive orphanage, tagging him with the nickname “Motherless Brooklyn,” also known as “Freakshow” due to his condition, but Frank doesn’t share the details of the case he’s working on with his crew, which makes things more difficult afterwards when he’s killed off in the first 20-minutes of the movie in an arranged meeting gone wrong.  While Lionel is a bonafide misfit, he also has a photographic memory, which is why Frank loves to bring him along, as he’s got a thing for details, going off the rails at times with his nervous disorder, but he loves to arrange things back into perfect harmony, like resetting the table exactly as it was.  This traumatic incident leaves things in a quandary, a scrambled mess that Lionel has to figure out, trying to decipher what Frank was working on, like putting together all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.  That is largely the structure of the film, introducing various characters along the way, trying to figure out their angle, while dark forces are conspiring to prevent him, like Frank, from accomplishing that task, moving in secrecy, resorting to diversionary tactics, routinely misleading him away from what he’s looking for, and roughing him up, if necessary, even make him disappear if he ignores their warnings.  All of this is familiar film noir territory, but what makes it work are such fully developed characters of interest, along with their more murky shadow players hired to protect them.  Norton introduces a new character not in the book, a real estate villain, Moses Randolph (Alec Baldwin, who of course plays Trump on Saturday Night Live), a larger-than-life figure based upon Robert Moses, a visionary yet contemptible builder who helped shape the look of New York City in the first half of the 20^th century, whose reputation was severely damaged by Robert Caro’s Pulitzer prize winning biography The Power Broker in 1974.  He was also a champion swimmer, where the film keeps intact his habit of keeping people waiting sitting poolside to see him until he finished swimming laps.  When he’s introduced at the newly elected mayor’s coming out press conference, Randolph is a nebulous figure that operates on his own, actually towering over the presumed corridors of power, assuming titles to various city authorities, which allows him unlimited power which he wields mercilessly, having little regard for the diminutive others that stand in his way, as he aggressively pursues various urban renewal projects, which means clearing what were labeled “slums” for ambitious real estate projects (though they weren’t actually slums at all, but simply places blacks, Hispanics, and even Jewish people lived), using eminent domain to tear down what he wants, even if people are still living there.    

The secret of Randolph’s success is remaining outside the realms of politics, as he’s not an electable position, which means you can’t vote him out, as he’s perfectly protected, unreachable as an entrenched power broker, insulated by the feeble whims of the electorate.  Making this character even more interesting, Moses has a brother, Paul Randolph (Willem Dafoe), a brilliant architect with visionary ideas, but without the power to implement them, stuck in a sado-masochistic co-dependent relationship with his brother, who loves to humiliate him by rejecting his ideas, then taking all the glory for himself.  Paul is a pathetic figure, following his brother around at public appearances, becoming a leading voice of opposition, decrying his blatant corruption, yet barely ekes out a living himself, a loner who’s borderline homeless, while his brother lives in opulence, like aristocratic royalty.  Among the leading opposition figures is Cherry Jones as Gabby Horowitz, a community organizer and rabble rouser (an homage to Jane Jacobs) who represents those people who are being displaced by gentrification, all people of color, all poor, without the clout to stand up to the city’s grand plans.  Working with her is a black attorney, Laura Ross (Gugu Mbatha-Raw in an impressive performance), appearing previously in Amma Asante’s BELLE (2013), Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Beyond the Lights (2014), and Peter Landesman’s Concussion (2015), while also winning an Emerging Artist Award during the Chicago Film Festival’s 18th Annual Black Perspectives Tribute in 2014.  Frank was apparently following her before he was shot, so Lionel does the same, discovering she lives near a jazz joint in Harlem owned by her father, a mysterious one-armed man.  Assuming the role of a reporter, this forces him to confront his worst fears, coming out of the background to interact and speak face-to-face with people, which causes insurmountable stress due to his affliction, where he can’t stop himself from tapping people on the shoulder, followed by an obligatory “Sorry.”  Following her, feigning an interest in her cause, she’s suspicious when he doesn’t jot down notes, but he appeases all anxieties by repeating word for word exactly what she told him, which is quite impressive to experience, as that’s out of the ordinary.  She doesn’t appear bothered by his various outbursts and mannerisms and invites him to the club, one of the showpieces of the film, featuring the talents of Michael K. Williams as the internationally renowned trumpeter, with Wynton Marsalis playing the solos, Daily Battles - Wynton Marsalis / THOM YORKE Motherless YouTube (2:35), which becomes the recurring musical motif for the film, also sung by Radiohead singer Thom Yorke, Thom Yorke: "Daily Battles" YouTube (3:22), which is profoundly effective, adding a dramatic pulse that feels strangely unique, adding an underlying layer of aching sadness.  While an unexpected romance develops between the two (he’s a generation older), revealing a couple of lost souls, it allows for a sweet release, despite suggestions of a “white savior,” and all the many recurring obstacles faced along the way.  An especially good showdown scene takes place between Lionel and Moses, with a large map of New York City behind him, a model construction of the city on the desk, while the imperious Brooklyn Bridge looms out the window, with Moses justifying his visionary intentions, suggesting he’s building for the future, that he can’t wait for everyday realities to slow him down, insisting he’s not above the law, “I’m ahead of it.”  While he’s consumed by power, he views the actions of relocating the poorest elements of the city as essential to delivering the necessary goods, adding longstanding racism and unembellished historical truths to a genre tale, leaving behind an expansive idea of an overwhelming sense of loss.  While flawed, most likely missing tauter editing and directorial prowess, there are nonetheless poetic flourishes, making this a highly entertaining and profoundly affecting picture.