Parenthood is a learn-as-you-go pursuit. You can rely on books, blogs and the advice of doctors and family members and psychologists, all while trying to operate from some core understanding you have of what a good parent is. Inevitably, the influence of your own parents comes into play. For Inez de la Paz, the heroine of A Thousand and One, not having parents at all motivates her to be the kind of mother who will “take on all of New York” for her child.
The debut feature from writer-director A.V. Rockwell — which won the U.S. Grand Jury Prize (Dramatic) at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival — A Thousand and One packs a punch, thanks to lead actress Teyana Taylor. As Inez, Taylor goes all-out to play the mom who rescues her 6-year-old son from the social services network that is failing him. When we meet Inez, she has just finished up a stint at Manhattan’s notorious prison Rikers Island for robbery and has a “rap sheet as long as a sidewalk.” Gripping a pile of wrinkled, handwritten ads for her services as a hairstylist, Inez holds up Brooklyn traffic to holler out to potential customers. It’s the mid-1980s, and Inez is rocking the look. She wears a ribbed red sports bra and jeans, heavy hoop earrings and a nameplate necklace that doesn’t ever come off. Inez is unapologetically herself — loud, quick to anger, and tough in a way that reveals how much the world has hurt her.
When her child, Terry, lands in the hospital after jumping out of a window to escape his foster mother, Inez knows there’s only one thing to do. They take the subway to Harlem, where she’s from, and spend stressful days trying to find a place to stay. But she lands a job, then a better one. She finds them a room, then a small apartment, then the two-bedroom with the 1001 address that gives the film its name. Six-year-old Terry (Aaron Kingsley Adetola) is quiet and observant, taking in everything and understanding more than we want him to. He wants to know where his father is, why other kids would say he was left on the corner when he was a baby. Inez gives away little, constantly assuring him that she’ll do anything to keep him safe. This includes changing his name and falsifying his birth certificate and Social Security card.
Adetola’s performance is superb, as are those of Aven Courtney, who plays 13-year-old Terry, and Josiah Cross, playing 17-year-old Terry. The elder Terry is at the head of his class, and his white teacher tells Inez she’s surprised to meet her — her son is so articulate! — as if to say, “How could such a smart boy have a hood-rat mother?” From midway through the film on, we hear then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani promoting his tough-on-crime approach to running the city. It was a time when jaywalking was a punishable offense, when stop-and-frisk ran rampant, putting the lives of Black and brown boys in mortal danger. Harlem is its own character — alive and pulsing with music and people. This character changes as white landlords start pushing Black people out, and the tension at 1001 gets near-explosive. It’s inevitable that Inez and her family will have to come to grips with her crime.
Taylor’s powerhouse performance is met by William Catlett’s as Lucky, the man just out of prison who comes to live with her and Terry in the beginning. Viewers might expect his character to follow the trope we too often see in films — the violent Black father figure who neglects his family. But Lucky is not about that; instead, he provides the sense of stability that Inez and Terry need. He’s at odds with Inez’s fire, but he sticks with them, and Terry has the father that neither Lucky nor Inez ever had.
It’s refreshing to see Rockwell depict a mom and dad who are so much more than their circumstances — who strive against the odds to be the parents they never had. The film clocks in at just a smidgen under two hours, and it might have benefited from a tighter draft of the screenplay. But that’s a small criticism compared to what Rockwell has accomplished. In the end, we understand what Inez tells Terry: “There’s more to life than fucked-up beginnings.”
