Look Into My Eyes
“See Me, Feel My Heart,” a meditation on channels and their relationship with their clients, is a nonfiction film in which the main purpose is to watch people, listen to them and, above all, reflect on the feelings they experience while telling their stories.
The film has no performers whose names and surnames are printed in the credits. There are no captions, subtitles, or other such narrative devices, assemblies or episodes in the film. Just by watching them, you know who is the channels and who is the customer. The key issue is not the story but how the story is told. This seems appropriate given the topic, a vocation that is arguably the most controversial of the many people unearthed in the footage. The first and perhaps the most important reason why Lana Wilson’s documentary is hard to watch is that it is an almost unscripted work. It evokes unease because it’s presented in a way that’s forgotten today but was familiar decades or more ago. To younger viewers, it might appear to be disjointed or cryptic or “artsy” mainly because they are not into older films, and have no context to help them understand what they see. And perhaps not, since it is a frequently deep and emotional documentary that remembers how to grab your attention in the first instance.
We start with a zoom shot of the same doctor who seeks the services of a medium because 20 years back when she was a house officer in a hospital, she had treated a 10 year old girl who was shot in a drive by shooting while coming out of the church with her mother. That lady is curious to know whether the girl crossed over and if she’s alright. Black screen in which that woman’s face reflects curiosity, pain and expectation. However, once we start spending more time with the different mediums, some patterns begin to emerge. Some of them were adopted and have this feeling of cultural or racial dislocation that enables them to be good in terms of servicing clients but also somehow makes them detached from the mainstream society. Most of them are creatives. There is one female who’s a painter and a few other actors, some playwrights or even a mix of them.
Mediumness can be confusing. There are times when it appears as though mediums are “fishing,” or searching but failing, which may not rule out attempts at deception. In other situations, they apparently unerringly reach exactly the client self desired, regardless of the absence of indications that might have aided them to achieve it deceitfully. Do the mediums actually converse with the dead? Or do they articulate out of a unique blend of inspiration and mass empathy, of a lack of a more accurate term, “performer’s intuition,” and the power of establishing interpersonal rapport completely out of context?
A few psychics know that the people who come to them for help sometimes have strange and wasteful emotions. For instance, one such psychic during one of the sessions announces that he sees a young male with a skateboard. When no one in the audience responds to that suggestion, he turns to the cameramen and asks if any of them have personal ties to such a young male with a skateboard. They don’t. Forgive me, he says, for not being able to concentrate. I’m tired, so I didn’t play very well and I’ll try to go back to the next session.
In reaction to questions by the filmmakers, he does, however, tell them that he is worried about being a fraud or someone who has been led to believe that they have a gift yet in reality do not possess such a gift.
Another one of the psychics (he finds it necessary to introduce himself as Michael towards the end of the movie) quite embarrassingly asks if the deceased man whom a client wished to talk about “had problems with his breathing” (yes, it is likely that almost anybody who is dead would have such a problem). He is told that the man committed suicide. The medium responds by saying “Of course, that would be a breathing issue.” “Uh, yes. Very sad.” The embarrassment is magnified by the fact that he went to school together with the client and didn’t know who she was to start with. He however says that at that time she had blonde hair, and then most inappropriately mentions the classmate that she came to see, called Brian, and rather quickly she brings out a picture and some other objects of interest such as a fan.
The film does not take a position on whether psychic phenomena exist, the afterlife and ghosts or spirits, or whether there is even something concrete, or indeed measurable going on in these sessions apart from the medium client relationship at some basic emotional level. It does take sides. It is more concerned with understanding the reasons why people attend and become mediums and what goes on in the said rooms when the sessions take place.
A lot of what Wilson and editor cap Hannah Buck’s magic, is made through ellipses, word ‘defazas’ describe portions of meaning that are pauses crucial in conversation and in our line of thought and feelings. You hear clients state why they have come to see a medium, and there is a pause after this in order for the medium to understand the context, then there will be another pause after they pose questions and attempt to reach the spirit whom the client would like to speak to.
The emotion of clients and mediums could be considered as an expression of an art themselves. These days, any film would not waste such time and effort to merely observe spectators expressing their emotions unless it is accompanied by a brilliant close up of a movie’s star making an explosion of feelings or this scene revolves around one intense feeling. Such pieces of film do seem to return to the ‘original’ point of cringe-inducing close ups why were they (CUs) invented?
A medium who gets embarrassed during the session sessions reveals that his motivation stems from a need to link with something great. So is everybody.
Another interesting perception that comes out is that all mediums more or less have absorbed the narcissistic dimension of the personality and at the same time have a genuine altruistic and compassionate orientation. All of them seem to be truly concerned about their clients and about the clients’ problems and want to help resolve them. Certainly, it is always in the subconscious where the urge originates.
A pivotal element of the film is the plot that includes visits with a certain medium a writer, actor and a cinephile. His space is well, ‘chaos’ is probably an understatement. Messy. He knows it and is ashamed to the extent that he asks the cameramen not to turn the camera in the direction of his bedroom because it is worse than the other rooms that have been shown. One of his favorites is Salles’ Central Station where an older woman takes on a young boy who she tries to help, and he also likes an American movie Ordinary People. No matter how much he tries to elaborate on the two movies that he loves, it’s a painful subject for him and consequently he starts shedding tears. He’s damaged, the same way his patients are.
Everyone is in pain. Perhaps, this is the key message of the film. There is suffering in each and every one of us deep cut lonely wounds, scars that Don’t go away and it’s just about how much people can take before they lose themselves. This is made even more prominent in the last passage when all the mediums come together and talk about therapy in this group where they are able to network and discuss their work.
‘It’s not completely altruistic’, another medium informs. ‘As a matter of fact, there is no selflessness. Everyone is healed.’
Cinema is a medium, in both senses of the word bringing people closer to each other and to the dead.
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