July 5, 2024
by Carla Hay
Directed by Andrew Hyatt
Some language in Mandarin with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in 2007, with flashbacks from the late 1960s to early 1980s, in the United States and in China, the dramatic biopic “Sight” (based on Ming Wang’s memoir “From Darkness to Sight”) features a predominantly Asian cast of characters (with some white people and African Americans) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: Dr. Ming Wang, a Chinese immigrant who has set up his own eye specialty institute in Nashville, looks back on his youth, as he struggles with financial debts and his quest to restore the vision of a blind Indian girl.
Culture Audience: “Sight” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching inspiring true medical stories that have elements of faith-based teachings.
Instead of being a collection of medical success stories from eye surgeon Dr. Ming Wang, “Sight” is a sprawling, faith-based biopic of Wang. There are good performances, but about half of the movie consists of too many flashbacks to his youth. These flashbacks sometime throw the pacing off from a suspenseful part of the story that is introduced in the beginning of the film. The very beginning of the movie shows Dr. Wang taking on the challenging eyesight restoration case of a girl who was brought to him from India, after she was blinded by her stepmother.
Directed by Andrew Hyatt, “Sight” was co-written by Hyatt, John Duigan and Buzz McLaughlin. The movie is adapted from Wang’s 2016 memoir “From Darkness to Sight.” The movie’s “present day” scenes take place in 2007, while the flashback scenes range from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. It can certainly be argued that the movie’s story could have been told in chronological order as a more straightforward way of presenting this movie as a biopic. However, the storytelling structure is presented in a way to drag out the suspense of whether or not a particular surgery that Ming performed will be successful or not.
The movie begins in 2007, when Ming is introduced to a patient who will change his life. Ming, who is sensitive and compassionate, is the founder of the financially struggling Wang Vision Institute, which is based in Nashville. The Wang Vision Institute was founded in 2003. In 2007, the institute is $600,000 in debt. Ming (a Chinese immigrant) is also considered an “outsider” in this American community. (“Sight” was actually filmed in Canada.)
After founding the institute, Ming took on an American business partner/mentor named Dr. Misha Bartnovsky (played by Greg Kinnear), who’s not in the movie as much as some of the marketing materials suggest because so much of the movie consists of flashbacks to Ming as a young person. Misha also has a kind personality, but he tends to be more of a realist (or pessimist) than Ming. Sometimes, Ming and Misha clash with each other because they are both very opinionated and stubborn.
Ming and Misha have an assistant named Ruth Tarik (played Natasha Mumba), who doesn’t say much in the movie and is a generic supporting character. Also seen briefly in the movie is June Bartnovsky (played by Natalie Skye), who has been married to Misha for 20 years at the point in time. Misha and June treat Ming as if he’s part of their family.
The patient who will change Ming’s life is a 5-year-old blind girl named Kajal (played by Mia SwamiNathan), an orphan from Calcutta, India. Kajal was brought to Nashville by a Catholic nun named Sister Marie (played by Fionnula Flanagan), in the hope that the Wang Vision Institute can restore Kajal’s eyesight. Sister Marie is Kajal’s guardian and approves of any surgery that Ming thinks Kajal might need.
Sister Marie tells Kajal’s tragic story: Kajal was born with eyesight, but when she was younger, Kajal was blinded by a stepmother who poured sulfuric acid in each of Kajal’s eyes. What was the motive for this heinous crime? Kajal came from a family of poor beggars who believed they could get more money from begging if they had a blind child.
Dr. Wang is immediately drawn to Kajal, who is a sweet-natured and trusting child. He wants to do everything he can to help her and begins researching unconventional ways to restore her eyesight. Dr. Bartnovsky is more cautious and advises ambitious Dr. Wang not to get his hopes up too much.
As viewers of “Sight” wait to find out the outcome of Kajal’s case, the movie takes several detours into Dr. Wang’s personal life. In his present-day life, he is shown to be an overchieving workaholic who has never been married and has no children. His immediate family members, who are also Chinese immigrants, also live in the Nashville area.
Ming’s father Zhensheng (played by Raymond Ma) and mother Alian (played by Wai Ching Ho) are proud of his accomplishments. They don’t quite feel the same about Ming’s younger brother Yu (played by Garland Chang), who still lives with his parents and is frequently unemployed. The parents’ attitude toward Yu is one of disappointment, but they don’t openly berate or insult him. They just seem to tolerate him with parental love.
Yu is one of those people who likes to come up with “get rich quck schemes” that are terrible ideas that go nowhere. In one scene, Yu says he has an idea to create a computer desktop icon that is labeled as a recycle bin instead of a trash can. Apparently, Yu is unaware that companies that make computers have already been labeling their trash can desktop icon with “recycle bin” label for decades.
Even though Ming is a bachelor who puts his work before his love life, he gets an obvious love interest in the story. One evening, he is having dinner at a restaurant bar by himself when he gives some medical assistance to a male customer who unknowingly eats too much wasabi and starts choking. The bartender on duty is a witty woman named Anle (played by Danni Wang), who notices how Ming came to the rescue and strikes up a flirty conversation with him. Ming isn’t really interested in dating anyone, but you know where this is all going, of course.
Meanwhile, after Ming meets Kajal, he tells his father that Kajal reminds him of Lili, who was Ming’s closest childhood friend when they lived in China. In the movie, Kiana Luo has the role of Lili at 8 years old, and Sara Ye portrays Lili at 14 years old. Ming then starts to have nightmares where a teenage Lili appears to him and asks Ming, “What happens when we die?”
Flashbacks show that Lili (who was the same age as Ming) and her widower father Gao (played by Peter Chan) were neighbors of Ming and his family in Hangzhou, China. In 1968, Ming was 8 years old, and his family was experiencing financial problems and could barely afford to buy food. Ming’s father Zhensheng (played by Donald Heng) was unemployed and desperate to find work. Adding to the financial stress, Ming’s mother Alian (played by Leanne Wang) found out that she was pregnant. The child born from this pregnancy would be Ming’s younger brother Yu.
In 1969, Gao experienced a medical emergency when his eyes were damaged from chemicals. As a result, Gao became blind. This incident became young Ming’s earliest motivation to become an eye doctor. It also led Ming to feel even more protective of Lili, who now had to care for her blind father.
The flashbacks in “Sight” also show that Ming ddn’t just have financial hardships in his youth. He also experienced the trauma of violence during China’s Cultural Revolution, which lasted from 1966 to 1976. This sociopolitical movement demanded that citizens be alleigient to Chinese communism at all costs.
As seen in the movie, children were often forced out of school to become oppressors in the movement. People were also kidnapped and killed. Ben Wang has the role of Ming at ages 14, 16 and 21.
The movie shows how Ming was a student at the University of Science and Technology in China, where he became a top student with an interest in laser physics. It’s a foreshadowing of the breakthrough medical procedure that Ming would later be credited with pioneering. The last flashbacks scenes in “Sight” take place in the early 1980s, when Ming continued his education in the United States, where he graduated from the Massachusetts Institution of Technology. The movie doesn’t cover his time at Harvard Medical School.
Because “Sight” shows early on that Ming is a medical doctor, the university scenes are bit too extensive, when the movie leaves it hanging for too long about what’s going to happen to eye patient Kajal. Chen and Ben Wang give very good performances as Ming in a movie that shows why the adult Ming is so stoic and afraid to express vulnerable emotions. The other performances in the movie are competent but not outstanding.
“Sight” might have a slightly jumbled story structure but the movie isn’t completely predictable. The outcome of Kajal’s medical case is very rushed toward the end of the film. Because “Sight” spends so much time on flashbacks, the movie could have benefited from showing Ming interact more with his present-day patients. Even with the movie’s flaws, “Sight” is a solid option for people who want to see a biopic about a medical hero who is not a household name but who has changed countless numbers of people’s lives for the better.
Angel Studios released “Sight” in U.S. cinemas on May 24, 2024. The movie is available for streaming to Angel Guild members.
