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. 

Hard Truths

 

Writer/director Mike Leigh

actress Marianne Jean-Baptiste

Jean-Baptiste with the director

cinematographer Dick Pope

HARD TRUTHS                    B-                                                                                                Great Britain  Spain  (97 mi)  2024  d: Mike Leigh

My films aspire to the condition of documentary.                                                                          —Kenneth Turan interview from The LA Times, September 22, 1996, The Case for Mike Leigh 

The inverse of Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky (2008), which features an endlessly cheerful Sally Hawkins, whose instincts are to face everything with a smile, yet she’s assaulted by a stream of incendiary verbiage from one of the more disturbingly angry characters in Eddie Marsan, a gloom and doom guy who takes exception to her sunny outlook, where the unanswerable question asked throughout is “Are you happy?”  This film instead seems infused by the relentlessly downbeat emotional whirlwind of a female version of that Eddie Marsan character, with little opportunity to take a breath of fresh air, where it’s something of a chore to put up with a protagonist with a lifetime worth of built-up anguish and resentment, a tortured soul who is undone by a condition that is completely debilitating, leading to a deeply unsatisfying mental outlook, railing against everything, constantly belittling people, as she seems to dislike everyone, thinking the whole world is against her, viewing everything as a perceived slight.  There’s simply no room for happiness here, featuring one of the most deeply unsympathetic figures in memory, who constantly quarrels with everyone around her, whose endless diatribes are soul crushing, spewing vitriol in all directions, with the film continually shining a light on Pansy, Marianne Jean-Baptiste from Secrets and Lies (1996), a performance that earned her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, the first-ever black British actress to do so, and also wrote the musical score for Career Girls (1997), where it’s been nearly 30 years since they last worked together.  In what has to be regarded as one of the more suffocatingly bleak outlooks, she simply sucks the air out of the room, determined to take everyone else down with her, like an unleashed tornado hell-bent on widespread destruction, wiping out everything in its path.  She exerts a supreme effort to keep a meticulously spotless home that is immaculately clean, yet sterile and cold, like a doctor’s office, with kitchen counters that have no clutter, and a barren back yard with nothing in it that she refuses to step into, fearful of the “squirrel doodoo and rancid bird droppings,” which seems to reflect a crying out for help, where the outward physical manifestations mask her inner turmoil.  Pansy is an angry, bitter woman who continually lashes out at others, seen in long takes, and long conversations around the kitchen, where you have to see it to believe it, with a nonstop enraged monologue over dinner that’s an exhausting ordeal, Hard Truths | Official Clip | Bleecker Street YouTube (1:46), yet there’s not a false note anywhere to be found, as it’s an unending barrage of exploding trauma wherever she goes, with her own family typically feeling the brunt of her punishment, including her overly passive husband Curtley (David Webber), who appears browbeaten and quiet, and her layabout adult son Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) who is emotionally shut down, completely withdrawn from life, where you really feel for those who have to put up with her.  Not a pleasant watch, a grueling experience that will try your patience, but it’s an uncompromising immersion into full-on obsessive-compulsive depression mode (OCD and Depression) from a wildly unhappy character, where mental health services are noticeably absent, which is part of the larger black cultural experience, yet there is simply no relief from the unending havoc she causes wherever she goes.  This kind of thing is simply not seen elsewhere, yet Mike Leigh has carved a lifetime of drama with this no bullshit approach, creating memorable characters that are part of his unique theater, and this is no different, but even this feels extreme within the parameters of his entire output, bearing a resemblance to the Clint Eastwood “get off my lawn” attitude in GRAN TORINO (2008).  Eastwood was a disgruntled war veteran, whose ingrained prejudices were part of his less than cheery disposition, yet there is no explanation for what’s happening here.        

With no editorial razzle dazzle or cinematic trickery, working with only a skeleton for a plot, where everything evolves organically, Leigh has cut a path of his own in the cinematic universe and staked out his own territory since the early years of Bleak Moments (1971), getting his start in theater, where his first several productions began as plays, which he then filmed for the BBC on television in the 1970’s and ’80’s before unleashing a string of social realist films beginning with HIGH HOPES (1988) and Life Is Sweet (1990), the latter notable for the first time working with cinematographer Dick Pope, who worked on all of the director’s subsequent films until he died shortly after completing this film, collaborating across period pieces and contemporary working class dramas that have documented the evolution of Britain into its post-Brexit era.  Returning back to an intimate chamber piece following his recent venture into period historical dramas, his first film in more than a decade set in contemporary times, where the interjecting music, like connecting threads between an episodic series of events, is a highbrow, Masterpiece theater style string composition from Leigh’s longtime collaborator Gary Yershon, this film may reflect the disgust that many people currently feel, filled with angst, inexplicable hopelessness, and unending despair, finding themselves living a life they never envisioned, as they’ve lost all sense of balance and independence, instead feeling the brunt of the day-to-day grind of living, completely overwhelmed by circumstances they can’t control.  This is also a story of generational trauma, with Pansy passing that trauma onto her son Moses, where at the heart of it is not being able to do anything about it.  It’s clear she’s not a bully, but the heightened level of terrifying fear she suffers from is likely the consequence of someone who was bullied.  The exaggerated nature of her inflammatory rhetoric can also be weirdly and awkwardly amusing, as it’s just too ridiculous, beyond belief, and incredulously disorienting, where comedy and tragedy are intertwined.  Yet what initially seems funny is also deflating, stopping us dead in our tracks when we understand the full extent of just how out of control she is, with Jean-Baptiste effortlessly exhibiting an astonishing range of emotions, contrasting moments of quiet with long, explosive outbursts that are verbally dense, voicing her displeasure by incessantly antagonizing people, a condition that was likely made worse from the isolation of the pandemic lockdown. The character of Pansy may be the poster child for post-Brexit uneasiness, a woman wracked by anxieties, tormented by inexplicable afflictions, and prone to raging tirades against her husband, son, and anyone who crosses her path, a character so real that it hurts.  At the other end of the spectrum is her easygoing younger sister, Chantelle, played by Michele Austin from Another Year (2010) in her fourth film with Leigh, a single mother whose life working as a hairdresser couldn’t be more drastically different from Pansy’s, brimming with warmth for her salon clients and two grown-up daughters, Clip from HARD TRUTHS - Directed by Mike Leigh, starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Michele Austin YouTube (1:29).  This film follows the adage, “Hurt people hurt people,” talkative enough to be a stage play, performed with the same amount of passion and intensity, yet dysfunction is at the heart of the matter, as Pansy wakes up in a fright, anxiously undone by frightening dreams, with things never improving as the day progresses, as every little thing is a source of irritation.  Rather than keep it to herself, however, she unleashes her frustrations at every turn, with her hard working husband and morbidly silent son typically the butt of her insults, passively avoiding any confrontation, or even eye contact, as it will only prolong the aggravation, instead meeting her volcanic eruptions with an emotionally numb wall of silence, where if they could crawl under a rock, they would, just to get away from her. 

Through a process of extensive rehearsal and improvisation, always trying something new, the actors in Mike Leigh films actually build their own characters, an essential part of the collaborative process, fervently believing in what they’ve created, with audiences sharing that same sense of belief.  The first of Leigh’s films led by a black ensemble, where it’s rare to see black mental health given any space onscreen, and even the title seems to suggest a clever retort to Secrets and Lies, yet viewer reaction may differ, as you might wonder why anyone would create such a compulsively miserable, openly antagonizing misanthrope, who has nothing but hatred for the people and the world around her, especially those closest to her, who can’t escape the relentless assaults on their character.  But this is not a film that asks viewers to sympathize with such a contemptible person, or even understand what’s behind it, yet by keeping her as the central focus of the film, Leigh offers an astonishingly humane portrait of a troubled soul, perhaps a reflection of the world gone wrong, where if she had cancer or radiation sickness, you might feel differently about her, but Leigh provides no clues.  She’s certainly intelligent enough to contemplate an awareness of the damage she inflicts, completely insufferable to be around, where the psychological ramifications are enormous, yet she’s excruciatingly lonely, actually hating what she’s become, expressing a deep dissatisfaction that she has experienced since she was a child, forced to endure her own mother’s incessant criticisms while taking care of her little sister when she was way too young, leaving her filled with self-loathing and disgust, but she simply can’t stop herself.  Growing more vulnerable as the film evolves, she’s seemingly running on fumes, as it all happens automatically, without intent or free will, literally driving herself into the ground, emotionally depleted and utterly exhausted, completely engulfed by things she can’t understand, the victim of her own revved-up anxieties and fears, where she can’t even visit a doctor without inflicting this same pattern of abuse on them, inevitably keeping her at arm’s length, not really able to help, so it’s a neverending cycle.  Perhaps the unsung hero of the film is Chantelle, who doesn’t understand what’s happening to her, but nonetheless loves her, as she’s family and wants to stay close, knowing she needs a friend, someone who won’t turn away or make any judgments, even as she aggressively turns on everyone she meets.  There’s no magical elixir offered, but Chantelle treats her as she would herself like to be treated, continually being there for her, offering loving support, which is a herculean effort, to say the least, as many in the audience will likely lose patience and tune out, fed up with this flabbergasting stream of unending insults, most coming with no provocation whatsoever, so whatever triggers these outbursts are internal, unseen, undiagnosed, yet lethal.  Few directors would have the courage to make a movie like this, but Leigh has a history of taking risks, and is currently 82 years of age, beholden to no one, free to do as he pleases, but unfiltered miserablism has always been at the core of British Kitchen sink realism, accentuating flaws and the complexities of life, where frustrations and disillusionment are human attributes, never a pretty sight to endure, but it’s a significant part of British cinema history, and Leigh’s own postwar upbringing, blurring the lines between theater and cinema, carving a path for new directors like Andrea Arnold, Lynne Ramsay, and Clio Barnard, while greatly admired by a younger generation of American filmmakers, including Sean Baker, the Safdie brothers, and Kelly Reichardt.  Expect the unexpected may be his mantra, as he’s been delivering a cinema of discomfort his entire career, but none more unsparingly depressing and bleak as this, trapped in your own body with no hint of escape. 

Mike Leigh and Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s Closet Picks   Criterion, YouTube (5:04)