It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.

Do you believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being?

We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Welcome back to the next picture show, a movie of the week podcast devoted to a classic film and the way it shaped our thoughts on a recent release.

I'm Tasha Robinson here again with Keith Phipps, Genevieve Kosky, and Scott Tobias.

On last week's show, we talked about John Borman's 1981 fantasy film Excalibur, the epic story of King Arthur's life, from preconception

to his disappearance into the mist of legend. There are a lot of similar mists in the Green

Knight, David Lowry's low-key fantasy film, which takes place on the edges of King Arthur's legend,

or at least we assume it's King Arthur, since he, Guinevere, Merlin, Morgana, and others are never

named, and only identifying the credits

with names like King, Queen, and Mother. The director of previous next picture show pairing

choices, Pete's Dragon, a ghost story, and The Old Man in the Gun, takes an alternately

minimalist and maximalist approach to one Arthurian legend, as a supernatural creature rides

into Arthur's court on Christmas Day and challenges any

night to deal him a blow, which he'll return in kind in one year. Arthur's nephew Gawain, played by

Dev Patel, and with his name pronounced at least three different ways in the movie, isn't yet a

knight. He has no mighty deeds to his name, and frankly, he's kind of a cowardly wastrel.

But the king has just taken an interest in him for the first time,

so Gawain is feeling the urge to prove himself,

and he jumps up and chops off the Green Knight's head.

People who know the medieval poem Lowry drew from for the story

won't be surprised at what immediately follows,

...