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 true with the past, but the past is not through with us.

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

I'm Scott Tobias here again with...

Genevieve Kosky, Tosh Robinson.

Thank you, Phipps.

On last week's show, we talked about Lost in America.

Albert Brooks's satirical comedy about yuppies trying to drop out of society.

And now we're bringing in the new Chloe Zhao film Nomad Land, in which Francis McDormon

doesn't drop out of society by choice, but opens herself up more readily to the lifestyle of

rootless, free-living Americans. The opening titles of the film inform us about the town of

Empire Nevada, which so completely

emptied out after the closing of the U.S. gypsum plant that its zip code ceased to exist.

Fern, played by McDormand, lost her job in her home along with her husband in Empire,

and now she's living out of her van, taking gig work wherever she can get it.

After a winter working out at Amazon Fulfillment center, Fern strikes out to the desert in Arizona,

where she finds a community of like-aged nomads who have figured out how to survive together

and apart.

She also starts making friends, most notably with a fellow nomad named David, played by David Stratherne,

who helps get her a job at Waldrug in South Dakota

and draws her deeper into his life. No bad land isn't plot driven by any means. Instead,

...