“Look Into My Eyes” is a documentary film that observes the worlds and relationships of mediums and their clients. Evidently, the focal point of the whole film is to focus on individuals, their conversations and stories along with their emotions and what goes behind them.
No names, titles or descriptions are presented to designate individuals referred to in the film. No text, voiceover or any banal narration is present. You use reasoning to know who a client is and who a medium is. It is the kind of movie that allows its subject matter to be expressed over how it is constructed and how information is showcased. That however seems to be the objective giving the topic which is a profession that a lot of people doubt its legitimacy. According to Lana Wilson, the film is a nostalgic trip to a kind of documentary that was popular more than fifty years ago. For those not familiar with such films, who do not know what to expect, it may appear to be incoherent, abstract and in a way “artsy”. Hopefully, not because it is a rather compelling and emotional documentary, and it films like the rest in a different manner.
The closeup is that of a doctor who some two decades ago was a junior physician in the hospital who treated in a drive by shooting a 10 year old girl who was leaving church with her mother. The woman tries to seek if the girl is at peace on the other side. Just then the sequence cuts into a black screen, ending with the woman’s pain and edge of hope. While meeting several mediums, there are traits that are apparently common in most of them. A number were placed in foster care and have deep racial or ethnic background issues that not only help them reach their clients but also make them feel isolated from the main stream society. Most are also creative people. There is a woman who is a painter and a few people who are actors, scriptwriters or anything in between.
At times and especially in an average skeptic’s view, it appears as though the mediums are either ‘fishing’ or worse still ‘pretending’. At other times they spontaneously look for the very same person whom the client was supposed to focus on staring them in the face with no apparent evidential basis on how they could have worked their way into it. Do the mediums talk to the spirits at the other end? Or is it a combination of sheer artistry and compassion, an instinct of sorts which can only be that perhaps of a actor and the want in them to transcend the ordinary?
There is a younger psychic who appears confused and agitated, but there comes such a time in a session when he states that he is seeing in his mind’s eye a young male figure who is holding a skateboard. When this cue fails to evoke a reaction from the client, the psychic turns to the cameramen and asks if any of them is ‘intimately known’ to a male skateboarder and their answer is negative. He apologies to everyone for his poor performance and states that he is fatigued. He then attempts to progress the session.
In a different interview, one can see he worries about being fake, he thinks he has the gift but essentially does not, as he says to the filmmakers.
Another of the psychics (he identifies himself late in the movie as Michael) rather mortifyingly asks if the dead man that a client came to speak with “had trouble breathing” (probably almost anybody who dies has trouble breathing, yes?) and is told that, in fact, the man hung himself. “That would be a breathing issue for sure,” the medium says. “Uh, yeah. So tragic.” The fact that the two of them went to school together and that he did not recognize the client of the psychic even made this situation more uncomfortable. However, later in the interview, he states that she wore blonde hair at that time and begins to speak about the man she had come to meet, Brian, who happened to be her classmate. She then unveils a photograph and various other items such as a fan, which elicit interest.
The film does not take a stand about the authenticity of psychic experiences, whether life after death, ghosts, or spirits exist, or if there’s something specific taking place in these sessions, aside from a simple bonding of emotions between the medium and the client. It does not seek to validate or disprove anything. It seeks to understand the motivations of those who seek out or become mediums and the activities that take place in the rooms when the sessions do happen.
Wilson and editor Hannah Buck achieve most of their magic with ellipses, be it the pauses, the hesitations, the silences in a conversation and in our stream of thought and feeling. Clients come to see a medium and say something, the medium takes time to digest what is being said and asks more questions after which there is yet another pause as he or she tries to reach the spirit whom the client wishes to reach.
The emotionality on the faces of the clients and the mediums is a performance in its right. People lack the patience that movies don’t require them to just watch people’s faces (besides using the faces of stars in dramatic long takes). Some parts of this movie seem to provide us with a reason why close-ups were invented in the first place.
Lucy’s community has one of fascinating mediums. She says that what moves him most in performing a séance is the need to reach out. As does everyone.
From the perspectives of those who helped the therapists, one of the most interesting notes that comes out is that all the mediums, to greater or lesser degree, are both self-centered and outwardly empathetic. There is none who appears uninterested in listening to the stories of the clients and assisting them in obtaining peace. Well, the desire does originate from somewhere.
Among the most striking threads of the film is a set of appointments with a medium who is as much a writer and actor and fan of cinema. His apartment is well, ‘cluttered’ is too soft a word. Messy. He is fully aware of this and feels so ashamed that he asks the crew not to turn their cameras on his bedroom, which is worse than the other parts of the house which have to be shown. He cites Walter sale’s’ Central Station’ which is a film that he likes and is about an older woman who takes care of a missing child and another of his favorites, Ordinary People.’ When he starts justifying why he likes these two films, he starts crying. He is in pain, just like his patients.
Others too are in pain. That probably is the central message of the film. Each one of us has been bad through some shocking experience in his life and the only thing that people may or may not notice immediately is how well we are able to cope with and/or express the trauma. This gets even more evident in a later part which focuses on bringing all the mediums lawyers together who focus on their group therapy and have a chance to interact.
As another source advises, “No, it is entirely selfish. Everyone benefits.”
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