It shouldn’t be a shock that many of the New York psychics profiled by Lana Wilson in her fascinating and, at times, maddening documentary Look Into My Eyes are actors, writers, or artists. At the very least, they are fascinated by invented worlds. Mediums and other people who have claimed to communicate with the spirits of the dead have historically relied on a bit of theater. Thus, the seances are conducted with heavy drapes, dark shadows, and guttering candles rather than in a fluorescent-lit WeWork space.
What surprises is how little these psychics seem to care about convincing skeptics (the kind who might chuckle when one of them talks about how long they’ve worked in the field as a “professional”) that their work is legitimate or absolutely true. Some even admit they could be making all of this up. As a group, however, the psychics profess a deep belief that what they do is important or at least helpful.
For viewers raised on the likes of John Edward and other carnival performer-like televised mediums, watching these psychics work in Look Into My Eyes makes for a sometimes-jarring experience. From one perspective, their often halting delivery and frequent dead ends could make them seem not quite ready for prime time. From another point of view, that same amateurishness can come across as winning authenticity.
Whether or not these men and women feel judged by those who see them as fakes, Wilson does not show them discussing any resentment. Unlike so many people who feel gifted or pulled toward a specific calling, they as a group communicate humility rather than certainty.
Given how often they are flat-out wrong in their predictions, this is the most credibility-building approach. Wilson (Miss Americana, The Departure) fills much of Look Into My Eyes with intimately and moodily photographed scenes of the psychics’ sessions with a range of clients. There is a restful, calm, and inherently anti-dramatic spirit to these moments, as the psychics present one tentative and frequently off-the-mark scenario after another. “I’m seeing a man with a fedora,” says one to a highly confused client. In another somewhat comedic scene, the psychic asks Wilson whether she or any of her off-screen crew are thinking of a guy with a skateboard after his client denies knowing any such person.
Very often, the psychics look like they are engaging in sheer guesswork. But rather than using an are-they-or-aren’t-they perspective about people who say they talk to ghosts, Wilson takes a different tack by delving into the psychics’ psyches. In addition to being mostly creatives and the kind of people described as “sensitive” in their youth (no hyper-confident athletes or engineer types in this cohort), they are also often dealing with their own losses. Some have ugly family histories; others are still grieving the deaths of people close to them. Almost all wrestle with loneliness. As a group, they are openly struggling with their place in the world and appear to be using their sessions with clients to give them a purpose.
Wilson’s presentation of these relatively matter-of-fact practitioners places them in a liminal and messily unregulated space between therapists and clergy. Their clients’ questions just cannot be satisfyingly addressed through other means. In Look Into My Eyes most powerful moments, we see people needing to work through their grief over death (a mother who lost children, a doctor who cannot stop thinking about the 10-year-old gunshot victim who died in her arms) and just have to unburden themselves. The psychics’ responses are often frustratingly generic (“she’s okay” is a frequent refrain) but seem to have a palliative effect. The result may not make sense to many viewers, but if Wilson has a point of view, it may be close to what Larry David’s character believed in Woody Allen’s Whatever Works about getting through life however one can.
As generous as Wilson is toward her subjects, however, she shows it when the mask slips. One psychic, who talks about being trained as an actor (“Shakespeare … Stanislavsky”), also theorizes that channeling spirits may not be that different from improv. Though she gets at a germ of an intriguing idea by pondering whether a psychic hearing voices of the dead is no different than an artist’s creativity (both seemingly come out of nowhere for no reason), her admission casts much of what we see as even more stagey than the psychics might prefer. In other scenes, such as those with the self-identified “animal communicator”, that disconnect between artifice and reality provides unintentional comedy.
Unlike their more popular and more worrisome colleagues, these psychics can acknowledge their ignorance. “Maybe we can peek around the corner,” one admits. “But when it comes to our own lives, we’re just as blind.” What these psychics are less able to do is leave a customer empty-handed without a positive and affirming message from the beyond. This is an understandable motivation. But that desire – to provide solace or keep paying customers happy – carries the potential for unwitting damage. Even at its most sympathetic, Wilson’s film seems to understand this, even if her subjects might not.