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. 

Where the Crawdads Sing

 

Director Olivia Newman

Producer Reese Witherspoon with lead cast

cinematographer Polly Morgan with Daisy Edgar-Jones

Mark and Delia Owens

Author Delia Owens

Delia Owens

Newman, Witherspoon,Edgar-Jones,Taylor John Smith, and Owens

WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING    C                                                                                     USA  (125 mi)  2022  ‘Scope  d: Olivia Newman

Sometimes I feel so invisible, I wonder if I’m here at all.                                                               —Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones)

A cinematic interpretation of the best-selling novel by Delia Owens, topping The New York Times bestseller list for two years in a row in 2019 and 2020, making her fiction debut at the age of 70, with a script written by Lucy Alibar, who seems to have a thing for movies set in southern states, having previously written the Oscar-nominated screenplay for the southern Gothic depiction in Benh Zeitlin’s 2012 Top Ten Films of the Year: #1 Beasts of the Southern Wild, and while filmed in Louisiana, this one is set in the marshlands of North Carolina, near a fictional town called Barkley Cove.  Produced and championed by actress Reese Witherspoon, who advocates female-centric stories, gushing endlessly about how much she loves the novel, describing it as “a love letter to growing up in the South,” with the popular novel selling 22 million copies, Excerpt from Where the Crawdads Sing - Delia Owens, part coming-of-age novel and part crime drama, intertwining issues of law, race, gender, morality, and murder, but it is not without controversy, as part of author Delia Owens’ hidden past has come to light, having been involved in a real-life murder case with her now-estranged husband Mark Owens and his son Christopher.  Like the protagonist in the story, Owens had a lifelong love of nature and wildlife, having studied biology at the University of Georgia, where she met her husband Mark, receiving a degree in zoology before obtaining a doctorate in animal behavior from the University of California at Davis, both avid conservationists moving to Africa to study animals in their natural habitat, spending more than twenty years there, writing several books and articles for professional journals, yet what they really found deplorable was the rampant poaching of elephants and rhinoceroses in Zambia who were senselessly killed for illegal tusks and horns that could be sold on the black market.  Desperate to stop this bloody practice, their activism grew more militant, seeing themselves as guardians of the wildlife, instilling a white savior approach to policing the Zambian wildlife preserves, with Mark and his son conducting airborne raids against poaching camps, where they were emboldened enough to call an ABC News show Turning Point to follow them on one of their raids, with their cameras capturing footage of a suspected black African poacher who was actually shot on camera, wounded initially, followed by several more rounds coming from offscreen until he was dead, which aired in a documentary special entitled Deadly Game: The Mark and Delia Owens Story on March 30, 1996.  An in-depth investigative article was written by Jeffrey Goldberg from The New Yorker, March 29, 2010, The Hunted | The New Yorker, where he actually interviewed the cameraman, Chris Everson, who shot the TV footage, who identified Christopher as the shooter responsible for the deadly rounds.  Owens rarely discusses this matter in public, having distanced herself from the event and the participants, simply claiming she was not involved in the shooting, though she and the others are still wanted for questioning by the Zambian police, as the body has never been found, evidently dropped from a helicopter into a nearby lagoon, likely devoured by crocodiles, with all three of them leaving the country immediately afterwards and have never returned.  One of the things that stands out is that the 2018 novel echoes many of the same themes from Delia Owens’ life in Zambia, drawing on her experience of living in the wilderness, cut off from society, with eerie similarities to the murder there, while also including a pattern of perpetuating racial stereotypes.  Even the jailhouse cat whom the protagonist befriends while awaiting trial is named after a Zambian man, Sunday Justice, who once worked in the Owens’ camp as a cook.  This is simply the backdrop to the film, which became a hot topic when Taylor Swift wrote an Instagram post that she was a big fan of the book, adding eyes to the project, writing that she “wanted to create something haunting and ethereal to match this mesmerizing story,” writing a song that plays over the end credits, Taylor Swift - Carolina (From The Motion Picture “Where The ... YouTube (2:53), using mostly women in key creative positions, directed by Olivia Newman, who has a Master’s degree in film from Columbia University.

A film that screams Hallmark made-for-TV movie where women are a central focus, with parallels to the trial sequence in Robert Mulligan’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), while also recalling Mary Steenburgen in Martin Ritt’s CROSS CREEK (1983), a fictionalized adaptation of a trip to the back woods of Florida in the 1930’s where author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Yearling, based in part on Rawlings’ 1942 memoir Cross Creek, yet also Andrei Konchalovsky’s SHY PEOPLE (1987), a Faulknerian story set in the back bayous of southern Louisiana.  With a production budget of $24 million, this is a story about abandonment, domestic abuse and neglect, the long-lasting impact of trauma, the power of literacy and friendship, and the wild, beautiful spaces of the marsh, where the naturalistic setting is the film’s calling card and is the dominant aspect overshadowing all else, WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING – First 10 Minutes YouTube (9:57), although it’s hard to miss a flying CGI heron in the opening sequence that transports us into the marsh, opening in 1969 with a dead body discovered at the bottom of a 63-foot tall observational fire tower, with the police attempting to discover if the victim was intentionally pushed or whether it was accidental.  “A swamp knows all about death, and doesn’t necessarily define it as tragedy, certainly not a sin.”  Moving back and forth between different periods, with the changing timelines shown on the screen, another flashback to the early 1950’s reveals a backwoods family living along a pristine marsh with an alcoholic and abusive father, whose violence against his wife and kids drives them away from the home one by one, leaving ten-year old Kya Clark (Jojo Regina) alone after her father leaves, creating a series of improbable events, where she is forced to raise herself in that isolated swamp accessible only by boat traffic, with no electricity or running water.  Kya is the lead protagonist, much like Delia Owens, a naturalist and loner, shunned by the neighboring town and community, who view her only with derision and contempt, disdainfully referred to as the “Marsh girl,” mocked for her poverty and ridiculed out of school on her very first day, leaving her unable to read or write as she grows up, instead she spends her time observing and drawing the natural wildlife, especially the birds, developing an extraordinary artistic talent, where her shack is lined with these watercolors.  She is also a curious collector of feathers, shells, leaves, flowers, and other wild things, assembling quite a collection, where her home becomes a repository of these discovered items, like a “glass menagerie.”  Her only friends in town are a black couple running a general store, Mabel and Jumpin’ Madison, (Charlene Michael Hyatt and Sterling Macer Jr.), who assume the role of guardians once all her family has left, the only ones really looking out for her, and she survives by selling them mussels.  Based on her outsider status, ostracized and reviled by the community, where she pretty much just keeps to herself, she is the likely suspect in the opening murder, with the police arresting her, building a case solely on circumstantial evidence, yet her name is dragged through the mud all over town, where the only townsperson willing to look through the glaring wall of prejudice is retired attorney Tom Milton (David Strathairn).  There is a stark contrast between the purity of innocence that Kya represents, completely immersed in the world of the marsh, befriending the wildlife, her one and only real friend, where her moral compass, social expectations, and concept of justice are shaped by observing the natural world, while the real dangers and threats come from the contaminating influences of town.  Where most individuals would struggle with isolation and self-preservation, Kya learned to thrive, enjoying every tiny aspect of nature, learning that everything is interconnected, all in harmony with the elements.  Once she’s older, blossoming into British actress Daisy Edgar-Jones, requiring a dialect coach to learn a southern accent, she eloquently narrates the story through a series of continuing voiceovers, adding a literary aspect along with wisdom beyond her years, and a perspective that is all her own, something of a wild child, yet restrained and self-reflective, never looking dirty or unkempt, with no sign whatsoever of bugs or mosquitoes out in the marsh, which is a bit of a mystery, seemingly impossible, so viewers are equally transported into a world of make-believe, which is sumptuously shot in ‘Scope by Polly Morgan, with music by Mychael Danna.

Equally improbable is a series of two drastically different love interests, neither one fully fleshed out, feeling more like movie characters, expressed through flashback sequences as Kya languishes in prison awaiting her trial, as Kya is befriended by Tate Walker (Taylor John Smith), having run into him throughout her childhood fishing in the marsh, finally meeting him out in the woods, lured by feathers left behind on an old tree stump, both sharing a common interest in nature, but he’s about to head off to college to study biology, but before he does he lends her books and teaches her to read and write, even writing down names of publishers that she can send her drawings off to for a possible book, providing another potential source of income.  Both seem inseparable, but his father warns him that rumors about them could jeopardize his future.  He heads off early for a job working in the biology lab, but promises to return on the 4th of July, asking her to meet him, but when the night arrives he’s a no show, leaving her utterly devastated, Where the Crawdads Sing (2022) - Tate Doesn't Come Back ... YouTube (3:09), where her many years of loneliness only accentuate the excruciating feeling of loss, “Being alone is a pain whose vastness is so great you can hear echoes.”  Miraculously, one of the publishers comes through, enthusiastically supporting her work, where the money she earns actually allows her to buy up all the land around the property, ensuring that it’s not stolen out from under her by developers, who are planning luxury condos out in the marsh.  Years later she begins a relationship with Chase Andrews, played by Harris Dickinson from Eliza Hittman’s Beach Rats (2017) and Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness (Sans Filtre) (2022), a pompous and promiscuous football star who is something of a charmer and sweet talker, used to getting everything he wants, and he wants Kya.  While viewers can spot a cad immediately, Kya is not so worldly, and is more easily ensnared, with next to nothing known about this man, often taking her feelings for granted for his own sexual pleasure, where he seems to manipulate her at every turn, even making plans for marriage without even asking her, but he does find a rare shell that she makes into a necklace and gives back to him, which he never takes off, but the real kicker happens when she sees him in town with another girl who’s engaged to be his wife.  This deception hits like a ton of bricks, where she really doesn’t want to have anything more to do with him, but he doesn’t take no for an answer, drunkenly having his way with her, punching her in the face and forcing himself on her, violently raping her, where she has to beat him in the head with a rock to get him off of her.  She had seen this violent behavior before with her father, “One thing I learned from Pa, these men must have the last punch,” where destruction is a way of punctuating their pent-up rage and anger, as he ends up trashing her home, with destroyed drawings strewn all over the place.  Shortly afterwards she is arrested for his murder, though she was in another town visiting with her publishers for the first time face to face, celebrating yet another published book, but the prosecutor believes she could conceivably have disguised herself while taking a night bus back to Barkley Cove and back again with none of the publishers noticing her absence.  Nonetheless, it’s a disturbing time, turning into an extended trial sequence, where the victim is none other than Chase Andrews (Owens’ version of a poacher), a local big shot, as his parents are loaded with money, where it’s their influence that is driving the trial, literally demanding her conviction after that necklace he was wearing goes missing at the time of his death, suggesting only Kya would have any real interest.  The direction of this film is simply unremarkable, with problematic characters, as Kya is overly saccharine and sweet, even saintly, while the men in her life are predictably one-dimensional, and the supporting characters in town couldn’t be more diabolically stereotypical, with the entire town literally sneering at this girl, treating her with nothing but contempt, preferring to believe she’s an inferior uncivilized being out in the marsh, where they don’t begin to understand or appreciate who she really is, much more intelligent and morally complex than they give her credit for.  It’s something of a sentimentalized mystery movie, where small-town prejudice is a prevailing theme, but despite a reverence for nature, with wild creatures doing what they need to do in order to survive, it’s a tepid, overly sanitized and simplistic rendering that is never fully believable.