When a blind orphan comes to his waiting room looking for a miracle, a world-renowned eye surgeon must confront his past and draw on the resilience he gained while growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution to try to restore his sight.
Well-intentioned but poorly structured and edited (the film doesn't necessarily have an ending, but rather an abrupt fade-out and transition to one of Angel Studios' usual commercials), Sight tells a story about how past and present inform each other. each other, but it is so long-winded in its attempt to do so that almost every section seems simplified, forced, cheesy, and overly saccharine.
Director: Andrew HyattWriters: Andrew Hyatt, John Duigan, Buzz McLaughlinStars: Terry Chen, Greg Kinnear, Natasha Mumba
There's too much ground to cover in 100 minutes, so every plot point, whether it's a look at the Cultural Revolution in 1970s China and survivor's guilt over not keeping a promise, a breakthrough in healing of blindness, the personal life of renowned eye surgeon Dr. . Ming Wang (an expressive and moving performance by Terry Chen) who found success in America, off-kilter comic anecdotes involving his family, a disconcerting disinterest in characterizing the young Indian orphan Kajal (Mia SwamiNathan) who was an inspiration for her life that she was blind to. her mother's hands pouring sulfuric acid to make life more sympathetic as a street beggar (that's a whole movie just begging to be made), or some weak third-act love interest material with a bartender, director Andrew Hyatt (co-written screenplay alongside John Duigan and Buzz McLaughlin, based on that pioneering doctor's autobiography) ends with stale, unimpressive Wikipedia-style filmmaking that would somehow put a similar film to shame.
The closer the narrative gets, the more it prevents the film from settling into a moment or rhythm, meaning the intended emotional hits never arrive. True, there are serviceable performances and a moving true story. However, even that is undermined during the end credits, making it the usual choice for a biopic to insert some images and footage showing snippets of the events that unfolded; It is moving and suggests that the strongest path could have been to make a documentary.
Stylistic choices, such as having Dr. Ming Wang hallucinate disturbing visions of his past as if to prompt him to not give up on children and continue advancing scientific advancements, feel awkward in a grounded film like this. Real history doesn't need that kind of dramatic, silly elevation; It would be compelling if the filmmakers knew what to focus on. One part is a mildly interesting look at scientific trial and error with Dr. Ming Wang experimenting alongside his trusted associate Dr. Misha Bartnovsky (a reliable, supportive and funny Greg Kinnear); another is a baffling sitcom with a bumbling brother who fails in his endeavor, and then there's a small bit showing how the good doctor met his eventual wife (lovely, but not necessary here), all while flashbacks quickly unfold without opportunity to establish yourself in a place and time.
Meanwhile, one wonders how Sight would have turned out if he had actually highlighted the connection between the blind patient and the metaphorically blind doctor, unsure of how to move forward with his future instead of presenting it as something to explain for the last 10 minutes. . It's reductive that the filmmakers only see Kajal as a source of inspiration, not a fully developed person, a trope that has plagued disability-focused stories for years. Likewise, the exploration of communist China is also superficial and deserves stronger treatment. Essentially, the View lacks a cohesive vision.
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