Look Into My Eyes

Look-Into-My-Eyes
Look Into My Eyes

“Look Into My Eyes,” which portrays both the mediums and their clients, can be categorized as a documentary film, but the viewer’s attention is simply directed toward people, their conversations, and the emotions that they experience within the narration of the events.

In the film, there are no onscreen identification with printed names and titles. There are no titles or footage without any other forms of narrative assistance. From their interaction, you understand who is a medium and who is a client. It is the type of film that has an alternative way of portraying its message, because of how it shapes and delivers information. That does seem to be appropriate considering the subject, which is quite controversial for many. From this perspective, Wilson’s film could also be placed in a tradition that has not been practiced in the past fifty years or more. People who are not fans of classical cinema and have no marker of the epochs they are viewing may consider it choppy, vague, or “artsy.” Hopefully not, however, because it is a deep and often moving documentary that requires viewing in a different manner than one is used to.

The film opens with a close-up of a woman who has consulted a medium. This medium was previously a junior doctor who treated a ten-year-old child gunned down in the streets in her mother’s arms after church. She wants clarity on if the girl is at rest on the other side. The screen blends to black as the women’s complex emotions of pain and hope fused between the frames. As we meet different parts of the mediums, patterns begin to crystallize. Many of them were adopted and this cultural or racial gap makes them intuitive with the clients but also almost out of sync with the majority culture. Many of them are actors. There is a woman who is a painter and several people who are actors, screenwriters, or somewhere in between.

At times, one cannot avoid the feeling that the mediums are doing some kind of ‘fishing’ or at least putting on a desperate show that borders on fraud. One also wonders how these mediums seem, as if magically, to connect with their clients on the very first encounter despite the fact that there were no apparent means that could have allowed them to be false. Are the mediums some sort of people on the other side? Or are they mere alchemists of their imagination and emotions, actors to a certain extent, who are able to immerse themselves into a client and a yearning to be taken upwards?

There is a session in which one of the participants is a rather confused young psychic who, for an inexplicable reason, decides that he is looking at a young man with a skateboard. When the client does not acknowledge that image, he attempts to solicit the crew by asking if they have some connection to a young man’s skateboard, and of course none of them do. He then begs forgiveness for being out of sorts which he attributes to fatigue and tries to proceed with the meeting.

He seems to be quite concerned with the portrayal of himself throughout the production due to the fact, as he pointed out in another interview, he does not want to be a kind of “fake”, a person who believes he is gifted but actually isn’t.

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.” That he went to school with the client and initially didn’t recognize her compounds the awkwardness. But then he notes that she had blond hair back then, and goes on to mention the man she’s come to see, a classmate named Brian, without any prompting, whereupon she produces a photo and other significant objects, including a fan.

The film refrains from answering the following questions: whether psychic phenomena exist or how otherworldly spirits or ghosts exist, and if they do, then can one measure their interactions in sessions, as it is assumed that only this emotional connection is established between the medium and the client. It simply states that it is not a goal of the movie to prove or disprove. It is however concerned with what people seek when visiting or becoming mediums and the activities that take place in the rooms during the sessions.

Cutting to the chase, Wilson and editor Hannah Buck edit text files a lot with the three little dots: the pauses, the uncertainty, and the quiet in between a conversation and a whole course of thought and feeling. There is one in modern times: the client comes and says why he is here, the medium bows his head, steps aside, and lets it all sink in, a brief interlude, more interludes as the mediums try to obtain information and reach the spirit the client wishes to hear.

Just as with every other work, the faces of clients, and mediums in mediatization and session arrangement is a performance. More often than not these days a film lacks the time and the quiet energy that the audience reserves to simply gaze at the person’s face, or else the scene is dominated by the whispered tension and emotional crux of a star during an extreme zoom. Some of the scenes in this flick appear to yield what are known as close-ups for the purpose.

The medium who feels that embarrassment during the session claims to want to be involved with something more than himself. And so does almost everyone.

Another enjoyable Statement made is that every medium to a greater or lesser degree is an egomaniac and at the same time possesses a remarkable sense of love and compassion for others. Each one of them appears to be quite curious about the people who come for help and the stories that they have to tell. Obviously, though, the drive must come from some origin.

A most poignant strain in Kira’s work is a cycle of sessions with a medium who also happens to be a writer, an actor, and who simply loves being in front of a camera. How to put it nicely his place is what you’d call a hoarder’s paradise. Messy Quite candidly, he understands this and is so embarrassed he tells the crew not to point the camera at his bedroom because it is more of a disaster than the parts of the house that viewers have had a peek at. Apparently, he enjoyed watching Walter Salles’ “Central Station” about a woman who helps an abandoned boy as well as “Ordinary People.” When he starts explaining his fascination with these two films in depth, he reaches for his handkerchief. That’s because he is suffering, just like his clients.

Just like that, everybody suffers. This perhaps is the greater part of the picture that the audience will take away. Each one of us is grappling with excruciatingly painful life stories and it all depends upon one’s self-control whether or not people can see it instantly. This point is driven home even more forcefully in the last chapter of the book which describes the first stage of the group therapy focusing on the mediums of the film where acquaintances and professional connections take place.

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