Bonus: Sight
Summary
Sight is the most recent feature film to come from Angel Studios (The Chosen, The Shift, Cabrini). This biography focuses on the life of Dr. Ming Wang, a renown ocular surgeon, from his earliest years in tumultuous, Cultural Revolution China to his struggles with overwork, chasing the world’s accolades, and finding faith in his laboratory in Nashville, Tennessee.
Assessment
Sight is a well-made biography and movie in general. The cinematography is appealing and professional, handling the flips between current day and decades-ago China exceptionally well from an editing standpoint. The acting is superb, with Terry Chen and Greg Kinnear bringing their characters — Dr. Wang and Dr. Misha Bartnovsky — to life in expert ways.
The movie faulters in one significant way, which is that the overall message is unclear. Technically, this is supposed to be a faith-based film about Dr. Wang’s journey through failure, doubt, and eventual triumph through his faith in God. However, that journey is somewhat unspecified in the movie. His struggles are well-presented, but there is no cohesive thread that ties the whole movie together. Is the message not to overwork yourself? Is it to not chase the world’s accolades? Is it to rely on God in all things? Is it to find your faith in your lowest moment? All of these are briefly touched on, but none of them stand out as the main theme for the story.
This being said, biographies do tend to work on slightly different terms than a piece of fiction would, depending on how true they are to the source material. A biography may not have one cohesive message since a person’s life may not have one, cohesive message. However, Sight has a rather large gap in it where an overarching theme could be. All the threads it lays out through the various trials and tribulations of Dr. Wang could easily be tied together in a neat bow, but they are not.
Light-o-Meter
Writing: 4 out of 7 Little Lights
Filmmaking: 5 out of 7 Little Lights
Acting: 5 out of 7 Little Lights
Cleanliness: Clean, save for bouts of context-appropriate violence (Kajal’s stepmother burning her with acid, the riots in Dr. Wang’s hometown). Some medical procedures in slight detail.
Theological Message: 3 out of 7 Little Lights
Overall: 4 out of 7 Little Lights
Talk
Sight is a good, well-made movie, but, in my opinion, failed completely as a Christian biography with an incredibly weak and undefined faith element. Dr. Wang struggles throughout his life and eventually submits to God when he needs to the most, but there is no faith journey in this movie. There is a jumble of trials in both the past and the present and elements of Christianity are present throughout, but none of it ties together in a cohesive plot.
Now, Angel Studios has been doing this a bit with their other biographies (such as Cabrini), where they depict the characters in a more faith-neutral sort of way. Not that the characters do not have faith, but that the fullness of their faith is tucked out of view and the emphasis is on their actions and reactions. I don’t particularly have a problem with this from a storytelling standpoint — although I would personally love stories with a stronger, more obvious faith element — as “faith-neutral” does not mean “un-Christian”. However, Sight was particularly bad about this when faith is obviously a key part of Dr. Wang’s story. This eventually led to a very clunky resolution to the plot, up to which point I had been confused as to whether or not this actually was a Christian film.
All in all, this was a well-made movie that simply missed one of the marks it was aiming for. Once again, the quality was there in both the cinematography and the acting (I greatly enjoyed seeing Fionnula Flanagan on the big screen!) and if you are a movie buff or someone this story would speak to, this would definitely be something to go see.
Wrap-up
Sight is the newest movie installment from Angel Studios. Based on the autobiography of Dr. Ming Wang, this film depicts his life’s journey from the upheaval of China’s Cultural Revolution in his childhood to the mountains he had to climb as a world-class eye surgeon.
Where to Enjoy
See Sight in theaters today!
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