Based
on To See and Not See by Oliver Sacks, At First
Sight tells the story of Shirl Jennings, who became
blind when afflicted at age 3 with polio, meningitis, and
cat-scratch fever. Shirl (played by Val Kilmer), nevertheless,
appears to have adjusted happily to life as a blind person,
and he enjoys the profession of masseur. In the film, a busy
architect (played by Mira Sorvino) from New York City is charmed
by his serenity while she is at a health resort upstate, though
in real life he first gave her a massage at the YMCA in DeKalb
Country near Atlanta. In the film it is love at first touch
(though in real life, love dawned twenty years later after
she divorced her husband). Realizing that she has fallen in
love with Shirl, she makes what may be a mistake in trying
to change Shirl by suggesting that new technologies can restore
sight to the blind, and he decides out of love and hope to
undergo an operation that would make medical history by removing
cataracts from his otherwise healthy retinas. The operation,
performed in 1991, is a success, but Shirl finds himself even
more confused than before because he cannot immediately decode
the visual images before him. Through therapy, he learns to
decode the images, and he enjoys regaining his sight. However,
he soon develops pneumonia, and for the second time his eyesight
leaves him. He then reverts to his former happy self, marries
his sweetheart, while showing no regret over losing vision
again. The film shows that the serenity of a disabled person
is the knowledge that there are always loving people to help
and appears to caution us about urging a disabled person to
seek an impossible cure when love itself is the cure for so
many ills. MH
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