Watch At First Sight

The title of the movie refers to both love at first sight and what happens when a blind adult gets his vision restored by surgery. It was inspired by the true life story of a man named Shirl Jennings. The fictional character Virgil Adamson (Val Kilmer) is the blind man in question and Amy Benic (Mira Sorvino) is the woman who falls for him the day they meet. At their very first meeting, she does not realize he is blind. She learns this later. After they get involved, she learns that he was not born blind. He lost his eyesight at age three. She also learns that a new surgery could potentially restore it. To her bafflement, he does not want the surgery. He has baggage over having been through earlier attempts to restore his sight which all failed. Ultimately, he does decide to go through with it. But having his physical sight restored does not give him the normal eyesight of your typical adult. He still needs to learn how to see, something most people learn at a very early age in childhood without realizing it. Thus, it is not as simple as just turning his eyes back on.