{"id":42269,"date":"2024-01-08T07:26:31","date_gmt":"2024-01-08T12:26:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=42269"},"modified":"2024-01-08T07:26:31","modified_gmt":"2024-01-08T12:26:31","slug":"a-thousand-and-one-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2024\/01\/08\/a-thousand-and-one-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"A Thousand and One (2023)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In as much as it is a film about a mother and her son, \u201cA Thousand and One\u201d is also a movie about the rising tide of gentrification in New York City. This adds a layer of absolute tension between Inez and her son Terry because as they\u2019ve hidden out for years within their city, now it\u2019s grown and pushed them out so much that they\u2019ve officially run out of places to set up their lives in. So much of the movies around New York in the modern age have been about the looming specter of gentrification and we witness it in real time, the idea of the old New York becomes more and more just a relic of a bygone era.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Unapologetic and free-spirited Inez kidnaps her six-year-old son Terry from the foster care system. Holding onto their secret and each other, mother and son set out to reclaim their sense of home, identity, and stability, in a rapidly changing New York City. With Inez\u2019s first appearance and taking of her son to restart her life, she\u2019s able to camouflage among her own community. Distinctly though, the more A.V. Rockwell\u2019s film progresses the less and less New York becomes a sprawling urban landscape. While \u201cA Thousand and One\u201d is very much a a mother and son tale, but also a tale about two people trying to keep up with a changing world that will soon push them out of it.<\/p>\n

What inevitably boils to the surface is not really Inez\u2019s fear for her son, but the fear that doesn\u2019t have anywhere to go. She\u2019s learned over the course of the film\u2019s narrative, through various confrontations, that she\u2019s no longer a New Yorker, but someone who fighting merely to keep her place there. Teyana Taylor\u2019s underrated turn as Inez really helps fuel not only the tension of \u201cA Thousand and One\u201d but the he desperation for some form of family. Taylor helps bring to life a morally gray individual who is both empathetic and abhorrent in their actions, and writer Rockwell builds a fascinating protagonist. Director Rockwell\u2019s film is such a great character piece, but it\u2019s also one that takes to task the corrupt system and the city that increasingly alienates them thanks to the creeping threat of gentrification.<\/p>\n

Although Terry and Inez look for a home, by the time the film reaches its final stretch, they\u2019re already bereft of a real place to call their home. It\u2019s not so much a movie about a two people looking for a home, but of the people of New York looking for home. The more the movie progresses, Terry and Inez become allegories for the people of color being gradually pushed out of New York. As we follow them, they rise from the streets to find a new home, and the more the time moves forward, the more they\u2019re pushed out in to the streets to find a new home. With new faces. Less Color. And higher prices.<\/p>\n

By the time we hit the year 2001, Terry and Inez are no long residents of Harlem, so much as they are now unwelcome inhabitants, stopped and accosted by police officers, and scammed right from under their noses by new landlords. Inez has been through a lot and been beaten down a lot, and in the end she not only comes to represent women but the native New York. It\u2019s a sobering message in a stellar, personal piece of art.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In as much as it is a film about a mother and her son, \u201cA Thousand and One\u201d is also a movie about the rising tide of gentrification in New York City. This adds a layer of absolute tension between Inez and her son Terry because as they\u2019ve hidden out for years within their city, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[111,302,1013],"class_list":["post-42269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-arthouse","tag-drama","tag-suspense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42269"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42271,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42269\/revisions\/42271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}