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The Next Picture Show

The Eternal Question, Pt. 1 — After Life (1998)

The Next Picture Show

Filmspotting

Tv & Film, Film History, Film Reviews

4.6858 Ratings

🗓️ 9 December 2025

⏱️ 66 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What Hirokazu Kore-eda's dilapidated post-life waystation lacks in luxury, it makes up for in rich thematic ideas.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Head home for the holidays with Abercrombie and Fitch. Between family dinners and making time to catch up with friends, my calendar gets booked up.

0:08.3

When I need to look put together, Abercrombie makes it easy to find outfits for all of my fans.

0:13.4

With their classic jumpers, essential hoodies and Abercrombie denim, I've got my holiday fits covered for the whole season.

0:20.6

Shop Abercrombie in the app, online, and in stores.

0:29.8

Hello, Next Picture Show listeners.

0:31.8

Here's a friendly reminder that if you enjoy the Next Picture Show,

0:34.4

you'll really enjoy getting more Next Picture Show by subscribing to our Patreon. You can unlock ad-free versions of the podcast for $3 a month and get bonus episodes on

0:42.8

current TV, movies we don't cover on the podcast, and other topics for $5 a month. We've already

0:48.0

recorded bonus episodes on James Cameron's Avatar, Fire and Ash, and Ryan Johnson's Wake Up Dead Man,

0:53.7

a Knives Out Mystery,

0:54.9

and those are set to release when the movies arrive. To subscribe to our Patreon, please visit

0:59.4

patreon.com slash next picture show. That's patreon.com slash next picture show.

1:06.1

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

1:09.8

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

1:16.5

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

1:23.4

Welcome to the next picture show, a movie of the week podcast devoted to a classic film

1:27.2

and how it's shaped our thoughts on a recent release. I'm Tasha Robinson, here with... Genevieve Kovsky. And Keith Phipps. Our absent co-host, Scott Tobias, has not departed this world yet, but he'd wanted to get ahead of the homework and figure out which memory he values most, so he's at home right now watching a huge stack of videotapes of his life.

1:48.2

This week, we're looking at two movies that frame the afterlife as a bureaucracy, where you have to make big symbolic choices for heavily symbolic reasons, a framing that in

1:52.7

both cases prompted me, at least, to think about where I would want to spend eternity and

1:56.7

what I would want to take with me if I was in either of these films.

2:00.4

Guys, were these movies conversation starters for you, or like, did they prompt soul searching?

2:05.8

Have you brought the question of, like, which one of these eternities would you, uh, would you

...

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