Lontano da Isaiah

When 2 different races make a child should it go to the one race he/she resembles or the one who is a better parent to the child? I do not like this movie. The color of the skin shouldn't matter. The best interest for the child no matter what color, is what is the best interest and stability for the child...

I hesitated in seeing this movie for a long time because I knew that, whatever the outcome, I would be unsatisfied. However, I am willing to admit that I was wrong and the movie is a fairly accurate account of unconditional love and by the end, I was in tears. Fine acting all around.

"Just because you f***ed some junkie in a street corner doesn't make you his mother!" / dialogue from Losing Isaiah.

The film starts with a drug addict (Halle Berry, who is surprisingly good.) goes around in one of Americas less glamorous blocks with a screaming baby. But the withdrawal symptoms becomes to strong and she lies the child in a container. When she wakes up the next day she can't find Isaiah. She is devastated. (Isaiah has been taken to the hospital when a couple of dust men found him.)

Jessica Lange, Hollywood's best actress, plays the successful doctor that sees a little crack baby lying and screaming on the ward and thinks "Wouldn't it be nice to have one of those around the house?". She adopts the little fellow and raise him together with husband and daughter.

The film jumps between Lange's family that take care of the kid and his biological mother, Berry who is building up a new drug free life. She eventually finds out that her child is alive and, of course, then wants him back. Lange doesn't want to let him go. Berry then hires a tough lawyer (Samuel L. Jackson) and trial it is.

An interesting dilemma. And the film handles it good, very good. You really want to know who will get custody and which of the two mothers who gets the ending frame (and then 'wins' the film). The ending and the ending frame unfortunately is a cowardly compromise.

Very heartwarming, inspirational, and touching film right from the heart. Losing Isaiah is a film based on the beautiful novel by Seth Margolis. The book and the film itself was outstanding. Wonderful acting by Halle Berry, Jessica Lange, Marc John Jefferies and the entire cast.

The film deals with emotional issues of adoption and it's based on real- life situations. The story-line was filled with hope. Losing Isaiah was a sad and uplifting moving story, a recommendation for all families. The film and the novel is must watch and read for a lifetime.

God bless this film.

"and a child shall lead them." - Isaiah 11:6

Try watching this movie sometime with a white woman who is the adoptive mother of an African-American child. I happen to baby-sit such a family and watched the movie with the kids' mother. I don't know how she sat through it without throwing something at the screen-not that this is necessarily a criticism. This film is very thought-provoking, though I think for the wrong reasons. The main focus is all about color and whether people should raise children of different races. Jessica Lange's character had a small speech in the courtroom about how love makes a family more than race, but it was just glossed over and the focus of the film went right back to race defining families. Maybe I just see this differently because of my close association with a family where the parents and one child are white and the other child is not, but family is not about race-corny as this may sound, it really is about love and support. The ending, as some other reviewers have said, is very wishy-washy. My viewing companion and her husband, who joined us at the end, liked it because they want to have a good relationship with their daughter's birth mother. I agree with them on that, but if the movie is going to deal with legalities so much, it should resolve those legalities at the end of the movie.