‘The Sympathizer’ Boss Explains That Change From the Book
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for The Sympathizer Season 1 Episode 1, “Death Wish.”]
South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook (Oldboy) and Don McKellar took on the task of adapting The Sympathizer book to the small screen. The limited series premiered on Sunday, April 14 on HBO, revealing its interpretation of the source material that’s highly praised for its unique style.
The Sympathizer is an espionage thriller and cross-culture satire about the struggles of a half-French, half-Vietnamese communist spy during the final days of the Vietnam War and his new life as a refugee in Los Angeles, where he learns that his spying days aren’t over. Those who have read Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel know the book is narrated by the unnamed main character.
The Sympathizer series named its leading man the Captain (played by Hoa Xuande), and they took a creative liberty in regards to the context of his narration. In the series premiere, the Captain is imprisoned in what seems to be Vietnamese re-education camp. He tells the show’s story through this setting across the seven episodes. McKellar, co-showrunner and writer, tells TV Insider why this change became their interpretation of the novel’s voice.
“That was one of the challenges, how to approximate the voice,” he says. “Viet said right from the beginning that the voice was the reason for the success of the book. He’s a bit of a wreck on tour, he’s a bit unreliable, and we wanted to evoke that.”
They decided to make the story “come out through interrogation” because that means “it’s, by nature, very unreliable, just like tortured victims’ confessions are unusable in a court of law.”
Making this series an allegory to film was also an early idea of theirs. It’s why they did the fun editing of the HBO logo that plays at the top of each episode and why you’ll see the Captain’s narration interrupt, rewind, and retell scenes throughout.
“The book loves film. People know the Vietnam War, think they know it through their images on film and American film, more than any other war in a way, and the book is about that, too, and how we have our preconceptions based on movies,” McKellar explains. “And it’s one of the Captain’s loves. It’s one of the reasons he’s split. He’s a communist, but he has a deep embrace of American popular culture.”
“So we thought that as a narrative device, as a storytelling device, we like the idea of an old Steenbeck [a flatbed film editor],” McKellar continues. “He’s shaping it like a movie. He’s editing, he’s rewinding. And it just reminds us that it’s one version of this story, one subjective version.”
The Sympathizer, Sundays, 9/8c, HBO
