Look Into My Eyes review: A24s doc breathes meaning into psychics

Director Lana Wilson (Miss Americana) had never visited a psychic before shooting Look Into My Eyes, her A24-produced documentary about a group of New York clairvoyants. Her perspective is one of gentle inquiry, but the film eventually reaches far beyond mere curiosity, yielding a deeply resonant work about the ways in which people cope with everything from grief to climate nihilism. Even if you see spirit-channeling mediums as scammers and bullshit artists, it's hard not to come away changed. Look Into My Eyes neither seeks to expose nor reaffirm the profession, but rather, through suggestion and implication, it explores these people and what they do. In the process, it comes to an empathetic understanding of why — even if the subjects themselves can't see the bigger picture. It's also incredibly self-reflexive. The movie not only frames psychic readings as a kind of art form, but it also begins to subtly mimic and embody their emotional scope. As it progresses, Wilson's aesthetic approach begins to morph, molding her storytelling lens in potent ways, resulting in one of the most unexpectedly affecting documentaries this year. What is Look Into My Eyes about? Credit: A24 The film begins, as most traditional documentaries do, with a series of talking-head interviews. However, its approach to this filmmaking norm is distinctly non-traditional. Instead of cutting away to montages or stock footage for broader context, it stays locked in on each of these segments in long, unbroken close-ups, allowing these secondary subjects — those who seek out psychic readings — to unburden themselves across the table from various self-proclaimed mediums. Some of these clients search for solutions to everyday problems, like a lack of motivation in the face of a rapidly changing world. Others speak strangely and obliquely of traumatic events in their past; a middle-aged nurse recalls having seen a young girl die from a gunshot wound to the head 20 years prior, casually asking her psych