A Thousand and One

Comparing A Thousand and One to Moonlight is a warranted line of thinking. Like Barry Jenkins’ Best Picture winner, writer/director A.V. Rockwell’s feature debut chronicles the life of an impoverished young Black man in three parts, played by three different actors, and with similar archetypal people cropping up along his path to adulthood.

But Rockwell’s gritty film plays more like Moonlight if it was directed by the Safdie Brothers — or, considering its panic-attack-free proceedings, Oren Moverman, who’s appropriately an executive producer here.

His Time Out of Mind, starring Richard Gere as a homeless alcoholic, has much in common with Rockwell’s tough love portrait of New York City, particularly the trash-strewn streets of 1994 Harlem that hairdresser single mother Inez (a mesmerizing Teyana Taylor) treks following her release from Rikers Island, and in her desperation to raise her six-year-old son Terry (Aaron Kingsley Adetola) without social services realizing she illegally has him.

The title refers to the number of the apartment where they eventually make a life for themselves, fortified by the suspenseful, risky help of forged documents to obscure Terry’s past and the addition of Lucky (Will Catlett, Black Lightning), a fellow ex-con who may or may not be the boy’s father.

While this tenuous family makes plenty of gains as a unit, the film’s jumps ahead to 2001 — blessedly devoid of anything pertaining to 9/11 — and 2005 rawly reveal the cracks in their already flawed plan and the weight this fraught existence places upon them. All three actors who portray Terry (Aven Courtney at 13 and Josiah Cross at 17) carry a sense of defeat in their otherwise kind, loving demeanor, and notably bond with Taylor, who capably expresses the travails of a reformed mother, doing what she has to do within the law for her family to get by.

These stark, honest performances anchor A Thousand and One, but Rockwell shoots the city via such creative angles that it becomes a strong supporting character itself. (When’s the last time you saw multiple pay phones play key roles on screen?)

This combination of character and place carry the film to a late-breaking revelation that changes viewers’ perception of the characters — sort of — but the true emotional wallop is its impact on the family’s dynamic and their already eroding sense of home.

Until then, A Thousand and One has been a solid, occasionally excellent drama. But in those final moments, it achieves an authentic greatness rarely seen in modern filmmaking, and for that achievement and those that precede it, Rockwell’s debut deserves to be praised.

Grade: B-plus. Rated R. Now playing at the Fine Arts Theatre and Grail Moviehouse

(Photo: Focus Features)