A Thousand and One

Director: AV Rockwell (USA). Year of Release: 2023

An ariel view of Manhattan. It’s full of skyscrapers, and, yes, those are the Twin Towers, so we’re set in the past. Title cards tell us that this is 1994 and we are in the detention centre of Rikers Island, before rapidly switching to one year later. Inez is now out of jail, and looking for her 6-year old son Terry (known as T) on the streets of Brooklyn. She finds out that he’s in hospital, having fallen out of a window trying to escape his foster mother. This causes Inez to stage a jail break.

Inez and T move to Harlem, where she grew up. Inez would love to open a hair dressing salon, but the only available work for an ex-con is a cleaning job in Queens, 2 hours away on the train. She struggles to find somewhere to live and calls in a little too many favours from friends whose family doesn’t really relish her presence. As she didn’t exactly have the authority to take T out of hospital, Inez gets her hands on some forged documents, and tells her son that he has to change his name.

Inez has an on-off-on relationship with a guy called Lucky,, who’s also spent some time inside. At one stage they even get married. But Lucky stays mainly behind the scenes, occasionally appearing, but just as often dissolving into the background. At one stage he tries to throw hoops with a now-teenage Terry, although even this feels more like he’s doing what he thinks a father ought to do than actually gaining any enjoyment from the interaction.

Time proceeds and Terry gets gradually older. On the radio, we here the voices of mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Broomberg, and gentrification extends to Harlem. Inez gets a new, white, landlord, who at first seems helpful and accommodating, but the workers he sends in to fix some loose tiles make Inez’s bathroom and toilet unusable. The landlord suggests that the best thing that she can do is stay with friends while he renovates the place, and then ups the rent.

Terry grows up socially awkward and not always able to articulate himself well. He’d like to be a record producer like Quincey Jones, but lacks the presence to convince other people of his worth. Part of Terry’s lack of self-confidence comes from the knowledge that he was continually abandoned by his mother. He is taken under the wing of a teacher, but she also betrays him when she discovers that his papers are not in order, calling in the cops.

As we watch the “Sold” signs of unnecessary franchises start to adorn the closed shops of Harlem, we are watching a type of progress – but one which ignores the needs of the working class people who are being driven out of the area. In the 1990s, Inez may have been able to survive sleeping on sofas of half friends. As time passes her room to manoeuvre becomes increasingly limited. As Inez’s life becomes increasingly difficult to lead, it is clear to us that the speculators are winning.

A Thousand and One is on the side of the angels. It feels for Inez and Lucky and their problems, which are largely the result of bad decisions taken earlier on in life, and for Terry, who is largely held back by social barriers and the actions of people who preceded him. This is a film which is clear that we are not born equal and that many of us – particularly Black people – must still fight to gain even the semblance of an equal deal. It rejects the pretence that we live in an equal world.

At the same time, there is a degree to which A Thousand and One is poverty porn. Although Inez and Terry are portrayed as being dignified, we never get any sense that they can escape their situation, Whereas this may well be the case for many people in Inez’s situation, it does deprive the film of much jeopardy. Life is shit and it carries on getting shitter. How could you possibly expect anything else? But if this is so, why do we need to watch to the end?

A second problem I had with the film is the dreadfully slow pacing. This is not so much one thing happening after another as something happening, then a load of uninteresting Stuff, and something else which may be of some interest, happening much further down the line. The fact that Terry is introspective and inarticulate does not help. It may well fit the character, but when nothing much is happening, waiting for him to say something can be like drawing teeth.

A Thousand and One is a film with lots of potential, even if much of this potential remains unrealised. Much of the script remains leaden and underwritten, as if the screenwriter has thought of another interesting idea, but doesn’t quite know what to do with it. For me, the characters were not strong enough to take me with them. But better an ambitious failure than a film with no ambition at all. This is a film which didn’t quite make it, but at least it tried.