The Sympathizer TV criticizes HBO spy series that subverts Hollywood films about the Vietnam War

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They say that history is written by the victors, but in the case of the Vietnam War, American perspectives have long shaped the collective memory of the conflict. The sympathizer, a new HBO miniseries from Don McKellar and acclaimed director Park Chan-wook, is a corrective to this Western narrative. A smart and stylish adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen's 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, it radically shakes up a catalog of America-centric Vietnamese films such as Apocalypse Now, full metal jacket And Section describing the United States of the 1970s through the eyes of Vietnam.

Specifically, the striking emerald green eyes of a protagonist known only as the Captain. A North Vietnamese communist spy deeply embedded within the US-backed South Vietnamese secret police, he is ordered to follow his fleeing general to America from Saigon and report on any counter-revolutionary activity . But as the bitter war itself draws to a close, an internal struggle rages within him.

The Captain (Hoa Xuande), as he himself observes during a flash-forward, is a synthesis of incompatibilities. As a bilingual, biracial man, he is seen as an other both by the countrymen for whom he risks his life and by the Americans among whom he lives. As a communist adrift in a country ruled by insatiable capitalism and irresistible pop culture, he finds himself both repulsed and constrained. Over time, the fear of exposure by the enemy is supplanted by concerns about the effects of excessive exposure to one's world.

The show revels in the intricacies of espionage: There are elaborate coded communications, menacing ethical dilemmas, and counterespionage missions. But he also uses espionage as an analogue for the broader experience of immigrants, who find themselves caught between their origins and their adopted environment, between a true identity and an assumed identity. The incongruities are often blatant. The General (Toan Le, excellent), for example, plots a military campaign from the back office of his liquor store in sprawling Los Angeles, a reminder of the chasm that sometimes opens between the past lives of an immigrant and his new life, often unpretentious. role in Western society.

The thematic richness of the story is complemented well by Park's thoughtful direction. Often, the fluid camerawork illuminates unacknowledged details and wry ironies: a communist pistol hidden in a Coca-Cola can; the execution of an American-loving Vietnamese man drowned by Fourth of July fireworks.

Assurance and nuance can also be found in a lively, witty script and in Xuande's wonderfully layered lead performance. Less convincing is the role (or rather roles) played by Robert Downey Jr (who is also executive producer). Appearing in four roles as a shady CIA agent, an orientalist academic, a conservative congressman and a hard-nosed auteur director meant to represent America as a whole (according to Park), the actor is visibly enjoying himself. do it. But these exaggerated archetypes risk turning the series from a dark historical satire into an over-the-top, heavy-handed farce.

An entire episode set on the nightmarish set of a Vietnam epic, for example, makes valid points about American soft power and the erasure of other voices, but feels like a shocking spin-off of the 2008 comedy film. Thunder in the tropics. The joke is of course on Hollywood, but it is also arguably to the detriment of the more enriching story centered on Vietnam.

On Sky Atlantic/NOW from May 27 at 9 p.m. Streaming on MAX in the United States