Losing Isaiah movie review & film summary (1995)

But it has been saved. Garbage men have heard its cries and taken it to an emergency room, where at first it seems about to die.

That's all right with the hospital workers, who have seen a lot of crack babies and do not believe in taking "extraordinary measures" to save them. But then a white social worker named Margaret Lewin (Jessica Lange) takes pity: "If you're not going to help him, you might as well just throw him back in the dumpster." The baby lives, and is eventually adopted by Lange and her husband Charles (David Strathairn). They have a teenage daughter of their own. The baby is difficult and hyperactive; it makes a scene at the older girl's school musical. But the Lewins love it. And so the situation remains until the child is 3 or 4.

Meanwhile, Khaila has been through drug rehabilitation and is clean, sober and working as a housekeeper and child minder for an affluent white family. Then one day she learns, almost by accident, that her son is still alive. And eventually, with the help of a social worker and an attorney (Samuel L. Jackson), she sues for custody. That leads to a courtroom confrontation and agonizing drama behind the scenes, in a ritual that has become familiar in many real cases.

Whom does the baby belong with? The parents it has bonded with? Or its biological mother? Did the mother forfeit her rights on that drugged-out night, or has she earned them back again with her recovery? What about the arguments that black children belong in black homes? The movie, directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal and written by Naomi Foner, deals with all of those issues, but in a finally unsatisfactory way.

The problem, obviously, is that there are no satisfactory answers - no way a solution can be found without causing great pain.

There are many individual scenes in the film that have great power, as when Khaila quietly visits the Lewins' neighborhood to see her child at a distance. But there are other scenes that ring false, such as a confrontation in a washroom outside the courtroom, where the filmmakers have stacked the cards by making Khaila look fresh and flawless, and Margaret ratty and tearful, her hair straggling into her eyes.