A Thousand and One: A.V. Rockwell takes character-driven drama to exhilarating heights
Teyana Taylor's towering performance inspires awards chatter with her break-out feature lead debut as a single mother making hard sacrifices to ensure a future for her son.
A Thousand and One, USA, 2023, 117 mins | Drama | Starring: Teyana Taylor, Josiah Cross, Aven Courtney, Aaron Kingsley Adetola, William Catlett | Writer/Director: A.V. Rockwell | Dist. by: Focus Features
As someone who relishes great performances, Teyana Taylor adds one for the ages in A Thousand and One, a debut feature from writer/director A.V. Rockwell who captured the Sundance Grand Jury Prize. It is a double-punch knockout: a first feature from Rockwell and Taylor's first lead performance. Together, the two return American method acting to the high mantle it once held. Lived in performances from Taylor and terrific turns from the three young actors playing her son Terry at six, 13, and 17, plus an endearing William Catlett as her man Lucky. All of whom leave a lasting impact. Under Rockwell’s confident direction, the performances are foregrounded in true method fashion rooted to an interior life that also does not shy away from the volcanic when required.
Method acting is frequently maligned in the media because it is misunderstood. What it means and how the term should be applied is to describe a performance grounded first in the realities of the character and his or her interior life. This means that the film’s plot, the sequences of events that drive the story, does not override character, leading to compromises that stretch credibility. It also allows for space between the dialogue that often communicate more than words through behaviour. Method acting allows the character to live and breathe without leaning on the crutch of plot to drive its story at every turn. Instead, it trusts that being invested in the journey of a great character, played with an unflinching commitment by the actor creating the illusion of “living” the part, will be as strong an element as the story. This is what Rockwell and Taylor have accomplished in A Thousand and One.
A Thousand and One tackles a challenge facing every indie filmmaker, domestic scenes in a cramped apartment with little in the way of production design for eye candy. Most, however, will not be able to overcome this challenge by presenting its audiences with an Oscar-caliber performance, as Taylor delivers here. This stunning turn of events is punctuated by location work that presents an authentic mid-90s period piece. As well, this guards against any possible claustrophobic overwhelm from the cramped domestic interiors. All of this is supported by outstanding cinematography from Eric Yue and a delicate score by Gary Gunn.
Through this captivating blend, the film never gets stale, clichéd, or meanders. Rockwell astonishingly keeps the pulse lit under this drama. She percolates mysteries of the past beneath Inez’s motivations in the present. Her single mother abducts her son from the foster care system in New York City and struggles to provide a future for him. The story is set against a backdrop of gentrification under then-mayors Rudy Juliani and Michael Blumberg. Both are heard twisting logic through clipped sound bites, where their use of rhetoric justifies fracturing neighbourhoods to in the name of economic prosperity for all. The irony is steeped, of course, as we watch its effects on Inez being slowly and systematically squeezed out of her home
Through a 10-year window, where Terry progresses from childhood to college-ready high school senior, and Inez goes from a street hustler to a worn-down working mom, the film serves up a consistently engaging look at this tight mother/son bond in the face of harsh shifting realities and a tenuous future. Just as things are looking to turn out for the best with a break at school for Terry, the film unleashes a narrative shift like none I’ve experienced in some time.
Just as things are looking to turn out for the best with a break at school for Terry, the film unleashes a narrative shift like none I’ve experienced in some time.
Taylor plays Inez de la Paz, an unrooted, single mother who left her son Terry in the foster care system. Coming across him at age six, unable to leave him again, she kidnaps him, absconding him to Harlem where she keeps a low profile. She commits to raising him despite her lack of resources to do so. She uses the one contact she has to start a base. Circumstances lead to her finding her own flat, while a steady labour job emerges, requiring a massive daily commute to Brooklyn. Through it all, her son advances through the schooling system while she takes on a new partner, Lucky (William Catlett), who struggles with his newfound role as a father to Terry at age six (Aaron Kingsley Adetola).
Despite Inez’s care and loving ways with Lucky, he is unable to quell his restless nature. In one vulnerable moment during coitus, she asks him if he’d like to go again. Overcome by his lack of self-worth from a stint in prison, he allows his insecurities to insert doubt into their relationship. However, Inez refuses to allow a permanent fracturing of their bond. Due to Inez’s emotional fortitude and her innate character to persevere, Lucky eventually surprises himself with his ability to be there for Terry as he grows up.
At thirteen, Terry (Aven Courtney) struggles to make the right choices in his peer group and to find confidence with women. He’s able to lean on Lucky for support, who shares how he met his mother. He comes to bond with him to the point of seeing his mother in an unfavourable light for being too hard on them both and blaming her for potentially pushing Lucky away. At 17, Terry’s (Josiah Cross) bond with his mother encounters a new challenge when circumstances reveal his mother’s maneuverings to skirt detection from authorities over his initial kidnapping, which he was complicit in as a child. Again, Rockwell delivers a gut punch here that deeply resonates.
With this indelible drama of a mother sacrificing her best years for the betterment of her son, Rockwell’s film portrays the fortitude of single mothers beset against economic powers that makes no room for them, updating the classic James Baldwin quote by adding motherhood into his initial treatise on race and socioeconomic status:
It comes as a great shock to discover the country which is your birthplace, and to which you owe your life and your identity, has not in its whole system of reality evolved any place for you. — James Baldwin
In the film, this force is exemplified by the passive-aggressive landlord who comes to update her apartment, as if bringing a ray of hope into the story. Only to deliver its biggest rouse yet as a stooge for gentrification, covertly forcing her out of her home. In his footsteps come the social services backed up by the well-meaning cops, no doubt exercising an early version of a mental health check.
Rockwell and Taylor, along with Josiah Cross (Terry at 17) and the rest of the cast, showcase character-driven drama at its finest worthy of this year’s To Leslie grassroots campaign for best actress (Andrea Riseborough’s successful groundswell support that led to her Oscar nomination in January). Working opposite three young actors who portray her son Terry at childhood, puberty, and adolescence, together with her here-today-gone-tomorrow husband Lucky, Taylor as the headstrong Inez, hellbent on pushing her son into a better life presents a force of nature crushing her performance in this stand-out indie.
The confidence that A.V. Rockwell demonstrates in her actors is the sort of approach that restores faith in the possibility that the status of actor-showcasing, character-driven drama has not died along with James Lipton and the era in which he championed the great actors over a generation. Taylor’s phenomenal performance will resonate for some time to come, and though it’s early in the year, I can’t imagine a world in which her name won’t be brought up when awards chatter officially begins once again.
In an age where great actor-lead character-driven films seem greatly diminished—levelled by superhero schlock, streaming dreck, and the exceptional advancement in technology that has reduced acting into something modulated within a frequency bandwidth set not to disturb you from your couch, but rather simply bolster the corporate narrative by blurring the lines between art, content, and marketing, its refreshing to see a performance and a film that embraces the humanity of its characters and their blemishes along with Inez’s aching lion heart that simply will not stop. Just as Inez commands Lucky, “I need you to be here for me,” Rockwell and Taylor demonstrate they are here for us and for the work.
Rating
4.5/5
Dear Reader, Thank you for being here. Your support makes this possible. Please share my writing with a friend, co-worker, or family member to keep the conversation around film growing.
Will you seek One Thousand and One amidst the blockbuster fare as we ramp into spring? If so, let me know how this stand-out indie film affected you.
You gave this quite the high rating, Malcolm! I liked your discussion on the method acting bit and how that interplays with character and plot. I'll keep attuned to that when I check it out. Thanks for the review!