[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for The Sympathizer Episode 1, “Death Wish.”]
Fleeing a country consumed by turmoil has rarely felt as raw and immediate as at the end of the first episode of The sympathizer. And according to acclaimed director Park Chan-wook, that was the goal.
“The Escape from Saigon is compressing all these images and auditory elements that inspired me when I read the original novel,” the acclaimed director recently told reporters, through an interpreter, during a roundtable interview. “This sequence as a whole has many elements, both visual and auditory, whether it's helicopter sound, propeller sound, people screaming; In other words, it is chaos itself. And if you have to define this whole show in one word, I think it would be 'chaos.'”
The new HBO drama, based on the novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen, centers on a double agent known only as The Captain (Hoa Xuande), who finds himself working for both sides of the conflict known to Americans as the Vietnam War and for the Vietnamese as the American war.
In episode 1, “Death Wish,” the series describes how turmoil reigned in Saigon during the days before the city was officially recaptured in 1975; turmoil that reaches its climax when one night, the Captain, along with dozens of others, literally have to run down a runway to get to a plane leaving for the United States.
Director Park said: “Even when I read the original novel, even though it was just text, I felt like I was watching these fireworks exploding against the night sky, causing these flares, rockets, engine attacks – a whole series of images. , and also the explosion and flames and gunshots that result from those images. Also, I was also imagining the hiss, the very uncomfortable sound that could sound like air breaking through the air when the rocket flies. So those were auditory and also visual images that came to mind.”
Among the others trying to escape is the Captain's childhood best friend Bon, played by Fred Nguyen Khan, along with his family, leading to the episode's disturbing cliffhanger. It's an especially important moment for The Captain, as Park explained: “It's at the moment where he needs to make the decision to abandon his friend to escape from himself. And speaking of escaping, going to the United States, for him, is not something he would want to do; “He is on the verge of this moment of dilemma, where he needs to make a decision right now.”
The Sympathizer (HBO)
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