HBO’s The Sympathizer Is a Piercing Cold War Spy Thriller Grounded by Park Chan-wook
Photo Courtesy of HBO
Even when Western storytellers do end up writing about the senselessness of the United States’ campaign in the Vietnam War, the focus still largely remains on the American soldiers coming to terms with the moral void of their country’s brutal empire. Fictionalized accounts of the next steps for America’s allies, the South Vietnam forces, are rare; not everyone knows that Operation Frequent Wind relocated many Vietnamese citizens to the safety of the United States once the socialist North Vietnam won the war. Stories like The Sympathizer are rarer still; based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Vietnamese-American professor Viet Thanh Nguyen, the HBO miniseries follows a North Vietnamese spy, named only “the Captain” (Hoa Xuande) who’s been embedded in enemy territory throughout the war, and is ordered to continue his double life as an expatriate in Los Angeles after it finishes.
The points of interest don’t stop there—The Sympathizer is co-created and partly directed (three episodes out of seven) by Korean filmmaking maestro Park Chan-wook, making this his third non-Korean-language project after Stoker and the underrated John le Carre series The Little Drummer Girl (The Sympathizer is split between English and Vietnamese languages). If that wasn’t enough, we’ve also got Robert Downey Jr. in four separate roles—each a different shade of overbearing American leech on the Vietnamese expat experience, mining their trauma and community for their own political or cultural gain.
It’s tough to imagine a more noteworthy pitch for a buzzy premiere, and The Sympathizer showcases its many talents with bold, slick expertise. For decades, Park’s direction has accommodated both dynamic, intensely-felt performances and tightly designed, eye-catching style. He navigates the precarious, panicked tension of Saigon’s final days before falling to the North Vietnamese in the first episode with rhythm and purpose, and we’re reminded how arresting characters can be under his watch. As the story moves from the explosive runways of Vietnam to American refugee camps and then to arid mid-’70s Los Angeles, the Captain’s allegiance to his friend and handler Man (Duy Nguyễn) in Vietnam is filtered through his observations of his fellow expatriates struggling to moor themselves in a country that would gladly leave the war it lost behind it—after all, it wasn’t their home.
It’s here that Park’s direction leaves the greatest impact; depicting the abrupt reactions to being displaced and the bitter resentment (or in some cases, resolve) that the Vietnamese expats cling to, where frayed and live-wire characters have to fight to remain whole. (Park isn’t the only creative adapting Nguyen’s novel; The Sympathizer is co-created and written by Don McKellar.)
Two supporting characters are fascinating to watch throughout, especially through the cautious, paranoid eyes of the Captain: his paratrooper friend Bon (Fred Nguyen Khan), who arrives in California grieving the loss of his family, and the formerly imposing General (Toan Le), who’s left in tatters after his side’s defeat. As the Captain dips in and out of the lives of these ostensible enemies, we watch the emotional process of staying stuck between two futures—the one that can be forged in a new country, and the one national ideology promised but failed to deliver.