Cynical Viewers May Have Little Tolerance for the Otherworldly Pretensions of ‘Look Into My Eyes’

Anyone who is taken to playing armchair psychoanalyst — and we all do, to one extent or another — will have a field day with Lana Wilson’s documentary, “Look Into My Eyes.” This isn’t to make light of the people we meet during the run of this deliberately crafted picture: The majority of them merit our commiseration. They are, to a person, seeking solace on the heels of dilemmas that don’t lend themselves to immediate or concrete resolution.The first person we encounter is a well-appointed, middle-aged professional. She faces the camera and recounts a story from 20 years back, when she was a doctor-in-training. A 10-year-old girl was brought into the ER, the victim of a random shooting, and it was clear from the outset that there was no helping her. The parents were nonplussed, as were the attending medical staff. Our physician was devastated. Here in 2024, she asks an unseen interlocutor if this former patient has found peace in the afterlife.The pain is genuine. Ms. Wilson turns her camera away from the doctor and ushers us to a variety of other individuals seeking otherworldly guidance. Who are my birth parents, one adolescent wonders, and do they regret giving me up for adoption? Other situations are less precise, though the memories extracted typically involve families torn asunder by drug abuse, suicide, and disease. Then there’s the bearded dragon. A young man had to give it up because of economic considerations. How is the reptile faring, he’s eager to know, under the care of its subsequent owner?The answer is flatly stated by a specialist in “animal communication and intuitive guidance.” The animal has made due with its new life, we learn, though memories of the former owner are, if not entirely empathetic, then sober and appreciative. A disinterested viewer could be forgiven for wondering just how Socratic a bearded dragon might be in its self-awareness. A cynical viewer could be forgiven for wondering how much in the way of cold, hard cash passed hands for this insight.Scene from ‘Look Into My Eyes.’ Via A24Still, Ms. Hoffman’s answer is met with equanimity. Another satisfied customer, you might think, and so it is with the other New Yorkers we meet during the course of “Look Into My Eyes.” Ms. Wilson’s camera enters the city by way of passing clouds and alights upon the lower reaches of Manhattan. Her movie is a portrait of the city as refracted through the purview of spiritualism and the ambitions, compromises, and losses particular to its citizens. The picture offers a rich panoply of individuals and their complications and concerns.Moviegoers with little tolerance for hocus-pocus will find “Look Into My Eyes” an infuriating and, in the end, unsurprising venture. A hankering for otherworldly portent has, after all, long been a mainstay of the human animal. Having said that, is there a distinction to be made between succor and fraud? Ms. Wilson compares sitting with a psychic to watching a narrative film: “the emotions I experience watching [a movie] are absolutely ‘real.'” The responses elicited by fiction, she concludes, “are just as meaningful” as those provoked by real life circumstances.Ms. Wilson is right: Art has an uncanny ability to stimulate our hearts and minds. Still, there is a difference between the array of feelings roused by a play by Shakespeare and the exploitation of similar feelings that have been cherry-picked by a confidence man. “I never fully believe in the things I say,” one medium tells us — and it’s worth noting that several of these folks have theatrical ambitions. “Look Into My Eyes” is an even-handed venture that prompts responses that are all over the map.

Cynical Viewers May Have Little Tolerance for the Otherworldly Pretensions of ‘Look Into My Eyes’

Cynical Viewers May Have Little Tolerance for the Otherworldly Pretensions of ‘Look Into My Eyes’

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