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Losing Isaiah (1995)
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Movie Review by Zara 
January 24th, 2007
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Gimmee that black baby!
When this movie was first released, I wasn't yet a mother. Every emotion that I felt was from the perspective as a daughter, trying to imagine myself in a position where someone could come in and take away from me the only mother that I'd known. It was a frightening prospect, even just envisioning myself where I might have to be relocated, ripped from the only family that I'd known. Over ten years have passed since I first watched LOSING ISAIAH, and in that time I became a mother myself. The movie still resonated deeply with me, but on a whole new level.
Isaiah starts off in the movie as a three day old infant, cradled in the arms of his crack addicted mother played by Halle Berry. Not able to leave her bawling baby in the crack den while she goes looking for another hit, she stores him away in a cardboard box by a city dumpster. In the morning the infant is discovered by garbage men, taken to the hospital where he comes into contact with a kind hearted social worker played by Jessica Lange. In her line of work, Lange has seen all manners of children abused, neglected and abandoned. She latches onto Isaiah and eventually adopts him into her family, much to the confusion and consternation of her biological daughter and her oft neglected husband.
Berry's character cleans up and becomes one of the few who manage to beat the odds. When she discovers that the child she thought she'd left for dead is still alive and has been adopted out without her knowledge or consent, she goes to court to win him back. The movie isn't so much one that tells the tale of two women and what constitutes a mother as it tries harder to be a one that questions why we put the welfare of adults higher than that of children, despite all of our claims to the contrary. Neither woman is perfect in her own world and both are well-intentioned, but the movie points out one of the ugliest sides of being a mother: our hormonal drive to turn our children into tangible possessions. Most people are severely disappointed with the ending, as I've often heard it referred to as a "cop-out." My opinion is one of stark contrast. In the end, both women set aside their feelings of pride and possession and think towards the welfare of the child, something that they were supposedly claiming to be concerned about all along.
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