Losing Isaiah Review
by Scott Renshaw (AS DOT IDC AT forsythe DOT stanford DOT edu)March 23rd, 1995
LOSING ISAIAH
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1995 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Jessica Lange, Halle Berry, David Strathairn,
Marc John Jefferies, Samuel L. Jackson. Screenplay: Naomi Foner.
Director: Stephen Gyllenhaal.
It is one of film criticism's most ubiquitous put-downs--one I frequently use myself--to compare a theatrical feature to a TV-movie. Such a description is intended to describe both subject matter (usually topical or sensationalistic) and manner of presentation (usually didactic or sentimental). LOSING ISAIAH has garnered more TV-movie comparisons than I can count, but the comparison isn't entirely appropriate. True, the subject of birth mother/adoptive mother custody conflict is a television staple; there were probably three such films on the small screen in the last month. But TV-movies generally feature one-dimensional characters and a specific agenda. LOSING ISAIAH features one-dimensional characters and a steadfast refusal to adopt a point of view.
LOSING ISAIAH opens in 1992 in Chicago's housing projects, where Khaila Richards (Halle Berry), a young black crack addict, leaves her infant son Isaiah in a box by a garbage dumpster. He is found and brought to a hospital, where social worker Margaret Lewin (Jessica Lange) becomes attached to the child and decides to bring him home. Three years later, Margaret and her husband Charles (David Strathairn) have finalized the adoption, and Khaila is struggling to make ends meet after a stint in a rehab program. Then she discovers that Isaiah is not dead, as she had believed. Enlisting the aid of an activist attorney (Samuel L. Jackson), Khaila decides to attempt to regain custody, prompting a court examination of race, culture and the best environment in which to raise a black child.
The subject of inter-racial adoption is a challenging and complex one, and no one would expect the makers of LOSING ISAIAH to deliver the final word on the matter. It isn't the absence of a patently obvious opinion from writer Naomi Foner and director Stephen Gyllenhaal which is the problem, but that there is only a cursory examination of any of the complexities involved. The inevitable court battle features the predictable array of speeches and finger-pointing, but none of these academic arguments are of much use to the audience. We need to see more of Isaiah (the adorable Marc John Jefferies) interacting with the Lewins, perhaps even being interviewed so his point-of-view could be understood. There is an attempt to deal with Isaiah's state of mind in some very effective late scenes which show him responding to a new environment, but those scenes are too little, too late.
Similarly, the characters of Margaret Lewin and Khaila Richards are not characters so much as they are representatives of the two perspectives. Jessica Lange is a dynamic actress, and she pours tremendous emotion into Margaret; there simply isn't much to her character, particularly a sense of why this particular child, out of all those she has seen over fifteen years as a social worker, won her heart. Some token marital difficulties are meant to fill in the blanks, but they don't do the job. The fact is, LOSING ISAIAH is far less about the Lewins' life with Isaiah than it is about Khaila, whose redemption is the heart of the story. Halle Berry is impressive in the early scenes as Khaila the addict, but in the film's later stages she becomes the 12-step version of the "hooker with the heart of gold," too squeaky clean to be real. It seems to be the film's idea of balanced presentation not to give both mothers a character outside of their fierce conviction that the other one is wrong.
Stephen Gyllenhaal's direction is usually best when no one is speaking. Two scenes are particular standouts: one in which Khaila first sees the 3-year-old Isaiah and follows him to a park, and later when Margaret and Khaila's black attorney (the under-used Samuel L. Jackson) share an uncomfortable cigarette break. Those scenes, and those from Isaiah's perspective, suggest that if LOSING ISAIAH had been more intimate with its characters all the way through, the story could have worked. As it stands, a controversial subject becomes a minor plot device connecting the stories of two rather bland characters. LOSING ISAIAH's contrived ending is somehow appropriate for this wishy-washy effort.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 custody battles: 4.
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Scott Renshaw
Stanford University
Office of the General Counsel
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
