“In the beginning, most psychics are like, ‘Am I making this shit up?’ Then proof happens.” So explains Ilka Pinheiro, one of seven New York psychic healers followed in Lana Wilson’s provocative documentary Look Into My Eyes. Does she, or do any of the healers, boast the ability to see into the future or commune with the dead? Is their intuition so different from that of a typical empath? Uninterested in proving anything definitively, this film instead probes what it means to be, or to visit, a psychic medium, asserting the complicated humanity of the healers, clients, and practice itself.
The psychics are not formally introduced. Instead we meet them organically as the first half of the film follows their clients. Capturing what is inherently a very intimate, vulnerable space, the camera takes the vantage point of a curious, empathetic witness. Long takes grant us the opportunity to observe the trust between client and healer develop in real time.
Fans of Wilson’s recent celebrity bio-docs, Miss Americana and Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields, will appreciate the director’s attentiveness to matters often dismissed due to their feminine connotations in our society; according to studies, women are more likely to believe in the paranormal than men, and to serve as psychic healers. What’s clear from the film is that a firm belief in a supernatural “spirit world” isn’t really what matters; what matters is, as one healer puts it, “the river of information” that informs true compassion when faced with another’s grief or uncertainty.
In one of the most gripping scenes, a young Black man shares his anxiety after discovering the will that listed his enslaved “great-great-great-great-great grandfather” as valued at $250. The healer, a Black woman, suggests that he turn that figure into a power number rather than let it “shackle” him. “It’s so important to him, your grandpappy,” she tells him, her eyes welling, “that we define freedom for ourselves.”
Intuition can be a taxing act. About halfway through the film, a psychic becomes frustrated with his failure to accurately read a client, and breaks the fourth wall to ask the film crew if anyone happens to know a skateboarder who’s passed away. “I feel like I’m losing it,” he confesses to his client. “I’m tired all of a sudden.” Many of the healers are also revealed to have endured traumatic or challenging experiences themselves: drug addiction, adoptive parents of a different race, the childhood death of a beloved older brother. As with any empath, the healers’ own suffering seems to shape their ability to fully engage with the suffering of others. And what is “healing,” really, but the capacity to bring peace to a body or mind in pain?
I was raised to think that psychics were, at best, frauds exploiting vulnerable people for money and, at worst, emissaries of the devil. The latter option was easy to reject as an adult, but the former suspicion was harder to shake. Yet as Wilson’s tender, often meditative, film makes clear, not all people peddle their psychic superpowers for profit alone. None of the psychics we meet in this film are making big money, and most live in cramped New York apartments and their clients come from a wide array of economic backgrounds. (Though it’s not clear from the film itself, the press release indicates that Wilson featured psychics who offer sliding scales if they charge at all.) Many are artists or actors by training, and, like most creatives, rely on multiple jobs to support themselves.
Look Into My Eyes implores viewers to reconsider ingrained assumptions about power, vulnerability, suffering, and loss. It suggests that much of the social stigma surrounding the practice of psychics is grounded in the fact that most are women or belong to other marginalized groups — not unlike the demographics of therapists, counselors, or social workers. It seems no accident that, of the seven psychics we meet, not one is a heterosexual man.
No matter their powers of intuition, the psychics don’t pretend to know everything. “Maybe we can peek around the corner and see ahead,” shares Per Erk Borja, who discovered his vocation after a bad breakup, “but when it comes to our own lives, we’re just as blind.”
Look Into My Eyes screens at the Film Forum (209 West Houston Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan) September 6–12, followed by a national theatrical release. The Film Forum will host a Q&A with the director on September 6 and 7, and with some of the feared psychics on September 8 and 11.
