“Preparation for the Next Life” is about two itinerants living on the margins of society. Aishe (Sebiye Behtiyar) is an unauthorized Uyghur immigrant trying to eke out a living in a Chinese community in New York. Skinner (Fred Hechinger) is recently discharged from three tours of duty in the Middle East. They meet up in their newfound world and, as best they can, try to comprehend each other’s complicated lives. Both have already endured much. Aishe, smuggled into the country in a truck and detained for a time, fears being found out, imprisoned, and deported. Skinner, despite his amiable exterior, is dealing with PTSD.
Atticus Lish’s PEN/Faulkner-winning 2014 novel upon which the film is based was a remarkable feat of verisimilitude and empathy. The director, Bing Liu, a documentarian making his fiction film debut, shares those qualities. His compassionate 2018 Oscar-nominated documentary “Minding the Gap” followed the young lives of three Rockford, Illinois, skateboard enthusiasts, including Liu, as they cope with domestic upheavals and paternal violence.
“Preparation For The Next Life” brings us into a teeming, contemporary world not often depicted in the movies with such sympathy. Liu’s keen naturalist’s eye is ever-present in the portrayal of these multiethnic streets and basement hovels and food courts. But this is more than a simple exercise in semi-documentary realism. The performances have a vibrancy. Hechinger doesn’t play up the standard wounded soldier tropes. His Skinner seems both unreachable to us and tremblingly close. Behtiyar, who has never acted in a feature film before, has real presence and an instinctive understanding of how she comes across on camera. Aishe’s ardency is without a false moment.
Why We Wrote This
The film adaptation of the award-winning novel “Preparation for the Next Life” benefits from being directed by someone who shares the qualities of the book that inspired it: verisimilitude and empathy.
Liu works his actors into scenes that have dramatic heft without seeming stagey. This is all the more remarkable because the script is by a veteran playwright, Pulitzer Prize winner Martyna Majok. This is her first screenplay. Both Majok, who was born in Poland, and Liu, who moved to America from China with his family when he was 5, recognize how rootlessness can inform every aspect of one’s existence. They appreciate Aishe and Skinner’s longing to discover some meaning in life.
Although both Aishe and Skinner have the wariness that comes from living in a climate of fear, they bond over their mutual desire to carve out a measure of peace. They also bond over being in top physical shape, pumping iron in a local gym. As we see in flashbacks, Aishe was trained to be a runner by her military officer father. Skinner is a push-up virtuoso. There is an element of competitiveness in all this, but a deeper explanation is that, in an out-of-control world, their workout regimen gives them something they can control.
They have experienced devastation in their lives but are still too young to fully comprehend their losses. Skinner doesn’t know to articulate his pain. Aishe works continually in menial jobs and is leery of how such a life can accommodate love. She is by far the stronger of the two. No matter how dire the circumstances, she never doubts her own worth.
She seeks solace in her Muslim faith, but when a religious leader tells her that she will have peace in the next life, she says, “that’s beautiful, but I’m living in this life now.” In his own way, Skinner shares these sentiments. He tells Aishe, “If there’s something that you want to do, you better do it today. You have no idea what’s gonna happen tomorrow.”
It would be natural to place this film in the context of America’s ongoing immigration crisis. Certainly it is “topical.” But I think Liu and Majok have transcended its immediate relevance. It’s a human drama, not a sociological artifact. Because of its quality of feeling, and the remarkable performances of its two leads, it will likely outlast its historical moment.
Peter Rainer is the Monitor’s film critic. “Preparation for the Next Life” is rated R for language and brief sexuality.
