The Sympathizer

It gets lowkey ROUGH once Park Chan-wook gives up the helm of the production to other directors after episode 3 tbh (in reading the forums it seems as though it takes a lot of liberties with the original material during this time)… but the strength of the original material totally shines as it reaches its conclusion. I’m kinda surprised by this fact given other recent shows, like The Curse, have maintained a consistent image and consistent quality even though the show creators will occasionally hand the director’s chair off to some other schmo. However, they eventually figure out a way to carve out some very original visuals and escape the sort of pastiche-ism that plagues other great left-coded artists like Sam Esmail, who I think provides a great comparison point to this work past episode 3 for better or for worse. This is more an issue with the source material here but damn does it harbor a lot of false sympathy for the communists. These both-sides-ist narratives always wind up just being negative about both while only holding the slight glimmers of hope to the moments very much intertwined with an utterly false conception of the American Dream. It’s rarely about the splendors of communism, just how it persecutes its formerly bourgeois subjects that the show is sure to make us emotionally invested in… I could never buy a communist giving a shit about killing a major of counterrevolutionary forces tbh unless he himself was also a counterrevolutionary, and this really justifies his reeducation in many ways despite the show trying to make me feel like his imprisonment is on false pretenses. Not the torture in the finale, of course, but I struggled to sympathize up to the finale with a guy who clearly did not approach being on-the-inside from the perspective and needs of his peers back in Vietnam. It’s inevitably a moralist work within the American film system despite trying to show how American imperialism thrives off of our moralist ideology. The quad-RDJ feels very stupid but I appreciate its thematic purpose. I don’t think anyone else could’ve done it convincingly. The payoff is as to be expected but is still undoubtably an illuminating psychosexual statement on the almost-paternity of American imperialism. I was pleasantly surprised by how much this work understands Said’s concept of Orientalism as it applies to East Asia despite its deficits in other departments regarding actually understanding the purpose of Ho Chi Minh’s revolutionary forces. Definitely didn’t expect such a thorough analysis of the American war machine, though. From culture to material reality, this piece of art definitely has a lot to say about how this machine scalps and sells the bodies of the colonized ‘other.’  Conversely, the opportunism of our protagonist presents another great means of criticizing revolutionary actors as well. The euphoria you see in paintings of the revolutionary struggle isn’t a sensation felt in the real world. There’s no pause to enjoy things just as there’s no pause to the planning processes of western counterrevolutionary forces. What our hero says as the show concludes is definitely lame tbh but his circumstance—parts unknown, aboard a tiny boat, new roads ahead—I feel is a great microcosm of being a communist. As I learned about Che Guevara a couple years ago, I was confused as to why he jumped ship right after the Cuban revolution, but this show definitely helps illuminate the necessity of that mindset. It’s a mindset built by circumstance and chiseled by revolutionary theory into purely indestructible will, a will aimed in the interest and service of the workers who comprise the labor that keep the world afloat.  A worthy watch despite its flaws (and my score as, to some people, a 3 is a detriment even though it’s positive?). Park Chan-wook’s imprint reverberates in a very satisfying way for communists such as myself as the work concludes. If you can bear taking this as a fictionalized account, it has a lot to say about the social democrats who seek state authority to advance the interests of yet another small sect of revolutionary actors. Conveniently reading State And Revolution rn tho so I’m probably just projecting and this miniseries is actually just more stylish, progressive lib anti-communist dreck to occupy your senses. Lmk.