Yahoo News ‘The Sympathizer’ Review: Park Chan-wook’s Sensational Spy Thriller Is a Hectic Identity Trip
In one of “The Sympathizer’s” lighter scenes, our young half-French, half-Vietnamese protagonist (referred to only as “the Captain”) gets a chance to speak his mind — and, for once, he takes it. The university where he’s just started working is hosting a reception for the Oriental Studies Department, and after being trotted out like a party trick by his kimono-clad college professor (Robert Downey Jr., in one of his many roles), the Captain (Hoa Xuande) finds brief respite with the only other attendee of Asian descent. Sophia (Sandra Oh), a blunt-speaking American mocked by the professor for showing so little interest in her Japanese heritage, kindly offers the Captain an appetizer. He refuses, but in explaining why, he also lets slip one of his few spoken truths:
“I believe the world would be a better place if we blushed at the word ‘murder’ as much as we did the word ‘masturbation,'” the Captain says.
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How he gets from refusing hors d’oeuvres to a sex-positive defense of self-pleasure is best left unspoiled, but what matters here isn’t the story; it’s the honesty within it. The Captain doesn’t get many opportunities to speak openly about anything because the Captain is a spy. Trained by the CIA and installed in the South Vietnamese army during the last four years of the Vietnam war, he is a covert communist, and one who hoped his tour of duty would’ve ended when Saigon fell. Instead of rejoining his revolutionary brothers in victory, he’s been sent to Los Angeles with his target/boss, the General (Toan Le), in case the vanquished military leader plans a counterrevolution from the relative safety of America.
The Captain’s conflicting dualities are the primary focus of “The Sympathizer,” a seven-part limited series so ambitious and sprawling it’s nearly impossible to winnow down the descriptors to any one point. It’s an anti-war picture that underlines the moral rot of mass murder while reframing the Vietnam War from the historically suppressed perspective of the Vietnamese; it’s a black-comic satire of white Americans’ meager efforts toward inclusion and understanding, onscreen and off; it’s a coming-of-age story of three friends whose personal loyalties are put to the test by political divisions.
The Captain holds it all together, in a remarkable turn by Xuande, as our lead tries to pinpoint his own identity among the disparate pieces of the parts he’s forced to play. (It’s worth noting director and executive producer Park Chan-wook embraced similar themes in “The Little Drummer Girl,” his last TV series and an overlooked gem.) Told mostly in flashback through confessions he writes while imprisoned, “The Sympathizer” plays out with apt omissions and addendums. “Rewrite, relive, restart,” he narrates in an acknowledgement that goes hand in hand with the opening scrawl’s final line: “All wars are fought twice. The first time on the battlefield. The second time in memory.” Some of the Captain’s secrets he keeps to himself (but shares with the audience), and others he can’t remember without a little “help” from his captors. But his vivid recollections of the fall of Saigon, his undercover mission in America, and his side gig as a cultural consultant on a big-budget Vietnam War movie are told with unflinching honesty (and give the series a valuable episodic structure).
Each event also evokes an internal struggle within our 20-something spy. As the Northern forces close in on Saigon, the Captain has to choose which officers will join the General on the last flight out of Vietnam. His duty to the communist cause suggests he leave the smartest, most valuable Southern leaders behind to be interrogated, tortured, and/or killed by his comrades from the North. But if his choices are too obviously detrimental to the troops he’s pretending to work for, won’t the General get suspicious? What helps his cause could cost him his life — a moral and ideological mismatch that’s reflected again and again, in a variety of ways, once he’s back in the States.
By the time he’s working on a movie set for an Oscar-winning, wild-eyed auteur (also played by Downey), the Captain shows no hesitation in defending the Vietnamese characters against gross stereotypes. (In the script’s first draft, none of the locals have lines.) But he still feels helpless within the uncaring cogs of the studio system, just like he does when following orders from his many bosses. As the shoot continues, the Captain keeps coming back to the graveyard set — an eerie recreation of his childhood village — where he sets up a shrine to his mother. Only in an artificial reality can he process real, lingering emotions, which gets harder to reconcile as the surrounding production grows uglier and uglier. (Even if he hates how movies are made, he still loves the movies — a dichotomy that indie cinephiles like you, my dear readers, should understand well.)
Which brings us to Downey, a recent Academy Award winner himself. Here, he plays no less than four roles, all of whom form their own relationship with the Captain, and all of whom represent a distinctly American blend of arrogance, charm, and power. As the director, he’s happy to depict the horrors of war so long as he can still relish its bombast and brutality. As the professor, he cloaks his fetishistic obsession with Asian culture behind academic bonafides. And as the Captain’s CIA handler Claude, he just likes pulling the strings, so long as he can sever any connection before it yanks him off his lofty perch. “I’m whoever I need to be,” he says to the Captain. “Just like you.”
There’s a comic quality to Downey’s depictions that effectively conveys the twisted worldview and bizarre nature of his characters — these are not men who make the Captain, an immigrant in a foreign land, feel comfortable. But their vibe doesn’t always fit the series’ shifting tones. His mustachioed professor would be right at home on “Saturday Night Live,” while the director feels intentionally stripped down to a natural, if antagonistic, version of the Downey we often see onscreen (a smart-ass motormouth who does whatever the hell he wants). The choice to cast him as, essentially, every American authority figure makes sense, and he certainly adds to “The Sympathizer’s” overall entertainment factor, but not every performance feels modulated to best serve their scenes (especially when compared to Xuande, who has to play the Captain as a chameleon — a man who, at any given moment, has to be himself and whoever others want him to be).
“The Sympathizer,” from co-showrunners Chan-wook and Don McKellar, can be overwhelming. Time jumps, tonal shifts, and an onslaught of existential ideas all add up to a head-spinning experience. Chan-wook’s direction is ferocious, and the first episode is top-to-bottom sensational, but Episode 4, which covers the movie shoot, feels like a missed opportunity. It’s the first entry Chan-wook doesn’t direct (he handles the first three), and his evident interest in comparing the deceit required of both actors and spies — as well as their ensuing confusion — could’ve delivered a sharper critique of the toxic behaviors encouraged by Hollywood than the flat, familiar characterizations shown here. (You love to see David Duchovny going full blowhard, though, as a Brando-esque diva who takes method acting to antagonistic extremes.)
So it’s ultimately Xuande’s layered, deeply felt performance that provokes the series’ most significant conclusions about surviving within broken systems, the inhumanity in inflexibility, and shame-free masturbation. Like the book that inspired it (although not quite as stunning), “The Sympathizer” is an eye-opening call to action. Ideologies can be dangerous, especially when you’re still searching for an identity of your own.
Grade: B+
“The Sympathizer” premieres Sunday, April 14 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO. New episodes will be released weekly.
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