A warmhearted movie you should see.
“Sight” is based on the true story of how the Chinese immigrant Ming Wang became a world famous eye surgeon in America, and has mostly been able to help people regain their sights. It’s another faith-based movie to remind people on the optimism an unlucky person would have in life. I’m not talking about the doctor, because he’s the one to learn that lesson.
Being blind is unimaginable in my perspective, especially when it’s forced upon by beggars. But I suppose there are those who don’t believe that sight is the only thing a person should have. That there’s more to life than seeing. Maybe that’s how optimistic the movie is in that sense.
Wang (Terry Chen) meets a potential patient in the form an orphan named Kajal (Mia SwamiNathan), whose sight was taken away in India, and because of her age, her eyes haven’t been developed. Meaning the left eye can’t be saved, but the right eye could. It’s a 1% chance. The nun Sister Marie (Fionnula Flanagan) turns to him, because he has been considered to be, by attribute, a miracle worker. Eventually, he comes around, and makes it his mission to save the girl.
His parents (Raymond Ma and Wai Ching Ho) and his partner Dr. Misha Bartnovsky (Greg Kinnear) worry about him working too hard and too much. They wish he could spend more time with them, while Misha would like to have drinks with him. But you know how committed doctors are. They have a reputation to keep.
But I don’t think that’s the real case here.
He also reflects on his past (between the 60s-80s), regarding his dreams of becoming a doctor being put on the back burner, due to an uprising in his hometown canceling schools. He also has a friend named Lili (Sara Ye), whose father has been permanently blind from a factory accident, and she soon becomes a victim of those protestors. And in his adulthood, he still sees visions of her everywhere, thus making him disillusioned by his own reality.
“Sight” has to feature corny elements, like how it thinks it’s funny when Wang’s younger brother Yu (Garland Chang) has no job, but ideas about Facebook for cats or an internet recycling bin next to the garbage bin, both of which makes absolutely no sense. I suppose the film cares less about whether or not it has to feature the corniness and more about its message about believing in yourself and seeking the positivity in life. That’s what I got out of this movie.
The past sequences look lighthearted, but are actually dark, considering the protestors and what the young Ming has lost and gained from it. And the present day sequences possess those same qualities, as well as a love interest he finds in a bartender named Anle (Danni Wang). Both Chen and Ben Wang (as the r teenage Ming) are fine in their own ways of processing the doctor’s pathos.
Co-writer/director Andrew Hyatt (“Full of Grace,” “Paul, Apostle of Christ”) presents better light and courage than how Joel Smallbone and Richard L. Ramsey presented them in the last faith-based drama “Unsung Hero.” “Sight” has its flaws, but it doesn’t have cynicism and it’s uplifting.
