‘Start at the cinema’, commands our protagonist’s interrogator at the open of The Sympathizer, the new HBO miniseries from Park Chan-wook. It’s a statement of intent. When literature is adapted to screen, there’s a tendency for that origin to be overly reflected in the form. For intertitles, verbosity, and establishing shots in place of scene description. That’s all present, yes, but we couldn’t be in better hands to subvert and elevate those tendencies. Few filmmakers put the visual first quite like Park.
Hot off the success of 2022’s stylistically-bonkers Decision to Leave, Park has teamed with HBO and Don McKellar, star of Atom Egoyan’s thematically-adjacent Exotica, to adapt Viet Thanh Nguyen’s 2015 Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name into a television miniseries. We follow in flashback the trials and tribulations of an unnamed captain (Hoa Xuande), a half-Vietnamese, half-French communist spy for North Vietnam placed within the South Vietnamese army, trapped between the dualities that define him and that others define him by.
It’s a compelling premise for a network miniseries and proves to be a pitch-perfect pairing with its co-showrunner Park. Park’s filmography is populated with tales of men and women trapped by their contradictions and pasts, confused, unknown, or unknowable in their identities and truths.
This isn’t Park’s first rodeo with television. In 2018, he adapted John le Carré’s The Little Drummer Girl for the BBC. When he adapts fiction for television, he’s evidently drawn to espionage and spy fiction with a political slant. Television this most definitely is. The foundations here are unmistakably HBO, the seductively glossy sheen recalling Boardwalk Empire, a series similarly sold on auteur involvement, and its slick structure recalls the work of Scorsese, its pulpier moments Tarantino. There’s a sense that a wide audience is being courted. But if Park is stylistically diluting himself, it only serves to strengthen his punches when the fangs do come out. His devilish sensibilities are employed to great effect to deliver a bitterly humourous, simmering, angry satire.
It’s serious when it needs to be, a cinematic rollercoaster ride when doing so elevates the material. And it’s invariably the most biting moments where Park wheels out his funhouse of directorial tricks – sudden queasy, uneasy zooms and jaw-droppingly inventive match cut transitions accompanied by a thrilling, menacing percussive score from frequent collaborator Jo Yeong-wook.
Nevertheless, casting the actor best known to this generation as Iron Man, pop culture icon of American militarism, is a fascinatingly inspired choice.
Hoa Xuande is a fantastically mesmerising screen presence in the lead role. The way he gazes and stares with hidden depth behind the eyes, interpretable multiple ways, a duality encapsulated in performance that challenges the viewer to confront his aesthetic ‘mixedness’ and see the consequent complications behind his eyes. He’s well matched with Sandra Oh, here playing a sharp-tongued ally against the cultural boxes that entrap and misdefine the two of them. Robert Downey Jr. is here also – and here, and here, and here as well, playing four separate roles across the series linked by their antagonistic roles and encapsulation of Americanisms various.
At its best, this creative choice evokes the sinister homogeneity of the titular ‘Men’ played by Rory Kinnear in Alex Garland’s recent horror film. At its worst, the amusingly distinctive prosthetics and costumes lend Downey Jr’s reappearances a Count Olaf-esque quality that can tonally jar in a way that doesn’t entirely land. Nevertheless, casting the actor best known to this generation as Iron Man, pop culture icon of American militarism, is a fascinatingly inspired choice. Downey Jr. also serves as an executive producer on the project, and it’s impossible not to view his involvement as a curious continuation of his work on 2008’s Tropic Thunder.
With The Sympathizer, Park joins Hirokazu Kore-eda (Broker) in directing in another East Asian country and in another East Asian language. The show’s dialogue is spoken in Vietnamese and English, a requirement Nguyen felt passionately about when offering up the novel for adaptation.
The commitment to authenticity in casting especially is refreshing and was commented on and felt by the audience and panellists at MilkTea’s preview event. The specificity doesn’t extend to Sandra Oh’s casting as a Japanese-American, but nevertheless the cast mirrors an ensemble attempting to reconcile and own their contradictions.
The Fall of Saigon gets the Oppenheimer treatment at the climax of the first episode, a glossy CG disaster film set piece shot through with boneshaking horror and an arresting focus on the scale and scope of human impact. It’s gripping and jolting in equal measure.
The second episode shifts gears somewhat, its contrast with the first providing us with another duality. The setting is now America and the show begins to fall into familiar dramatic rhythms as we’re introduced to a wider cast and the shape of the season becomes clearer. But Park and McKellar in adapting Nguyen’s writing don’t allow us to forget the harsh realities and bitter truths, the digestibility of the drama repeatedly disrupted and challenged. This is drama with a sharp, piercing gaze and political purpose.
‘Start at the cinema, and this time remember every detail.’
All episodes of The Sympathizer release Monday 27th May in the UK on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV. With thanks to MilkTea, who organised this community preview screening event of Episodes 1 and 2.
