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

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

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

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

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

On last week's episode, we talked about AI, artificial intelligence, a science fiction film about an uncommonly sophisticated

android who gets adopted by a family and goes in a journey to find them after they can no longer

have them in the house. This week we're bringing in after Yang, the new film by Koganada,

who made a striking independent debut with a 2017 film, Columbus.

After Yang is also about a sophisticated android who gets adopted by a family,

but he malfunctions and breaks down right after the opening credits.

And so the journey in the film is not taken by a robot by by a father, Jake, played by Colin Farrell.

Yang is the name of the quote-unquote technoosapion that Jake and his wife, Kira, played by Jody Turner Smith, picked up for their own adopted daughter as an older brother type.

Though as too busy parents, they've been leaning too hard on Yang to fill in the caretaking gaps.

So like any overcompensating father, Jake promises

his daughter, Mika, that he's going to get Yang repaired, even though he bought a refurbished

model from a shop in Chinatown that no longer exists. So in the absence of a genius bar,

Jake tries to get the Android fix in various repair shops, but at a certain point, when

it's clear repair isn't possible, he becomes interested in accessing Yang's memories and

understanding the philosophical mysteries at his core.

After Yang could be thought about as a live action inside out, and that Yang's component parts

allow us to break down the inner workings of the human mind.

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