Sight
A well-meaning and well-made biography, Sight has the same problem most biopics have – finding a reason for its existence beyond the fact its events happened and never quite rising above being a recitation of them. None of that takes away from the value of Ming Wang’s (Chen) accomplishments or experiences, but it doesn’t throw a potent spotlight on them either.
On paper he is a fantastically accomplished individual – a Chinese émigré who received both a medical degree from Harvard and a PhD in laser physics to focus on surgical treatment for blindness leading to the founding of his own blindness center. He’s the kind of person who should serve as an example to others, and a biography make sense to accomplish exactly that. But it’s still a dramatic artform in need of conflict and biography struggles with that at the best of time.
Cutting back and forth between Wang’s youth in communist China and his work in the early 2000’s on surgical cures for blindness, Sight seems like it should have that conflict built in. The son of doctors himself, Wang watched his friends and country struggle with a lack of resources and related violence before eventually leaving for the US when it became clear he couldn’t follow his goal of being a doctor there. Pushing the trauma of his youth behind him middle-aged Wang is a driven surgeon with no personal life to speak of, whose closest friend is also his co-worker (Kinnear), he seldom questions what it is that drives him so. When a young girl (Nathan) with a particularly difficult condition arrives at his institute, memories of his past begin to resurface in a way he can no longer ignore.
All of the struggle is right there and Sight approaches it but frequently dances away with only a light touch. What Wang has done is under no doubt at any point, but despite looking directly at the ‘why’ it stops just short of true insight. Clear and professional throughout, subtext remains keenly missing and the loss is deeply felt. Why he wants to fix Kajal’s vision is no mystery – his rising guilt over the people left behind in China he was not able to help, including his parents and childhood friend, push him to fix every problem in front of him at the cost of any life of his own. Not is asked is how he feels about his parents pushing towards being an eye-doctor in the first place, even into studying music as well. All of the elements of his life are laid out for him without his opinion till it is unclear what he is doing is what he wants or what he has been told he wants. Somewhere in there is the meat of a story but director Hyatt never quite gets there.
None of which should take away from what Sight has accomplished. Wang’s story is tremendously inspiring, and Chen lives up to him even he is not given the most complexity to play. He’s helped by sharing so much time with Kinnear who works hard to keep the spotlight on him and make his struggles feel like something by contrast. If Wang is the ideal of what can be accomplished through sheer singlemindedness, Kinnear’s Bartnovsky is the the man Wang should perhaps be trying to emulate, balancing his work with a family life in a way Wang has never managed. It’s through Kinnear, and Fionnula Flannigan’s Sister Marie, that humor and humanity is allowed to enter because Wang has never allowed himself the freedom to feel such.
That begins to change when he meets bartender Ruth (Mumba), a stranger to whom he can open up about his past pain in a way he can’t with the people closest to him. Ruth herself recedes, a gateway to the past more than a participant in the present, but the payoff is some of the most enticing elements in Sight as Meng finally unburdens the tragedies of his past in China as a localized uprising tears friends and family members away from him and finally solidifies his decision to leave China and search for a future elsewhere no matter what obstacles appear in front him. After surviving what he has, what is an indifferent education system, prejudiced educators, intractable disease, or the laws of physics?
Everyone involved knows exactly how to make this film and Sight flows, easily and without trouble. Sight is a smooth, easy going experience about a truly commendable figure surrounded by performers who know exactly what to do to get Wang’s story across. The fact that there is another, even more interesting story, just below the surface and within the fingertip reach of the filmmakers is a little saddening but doesn’t reduce what Hyatt et al. have accomplished. It could be a better story, but it’s still one that deserves to be told.
6.5 out of 10
Starring Terry Chen, Greg Kinnear, Jayden Zhang, Natasha Mumba, Fionnula Flanagan and Mia Swami Nathan. Directed by Andrew Hyatt.