SPOILER ALERT: The following interview contains spoilers for “Endings Are Hard, Aren’t They?” “, the series finale of “The Sympathizer” on HBO.
Robert Downey Jr. may have played five different characters in “The Sympathizer,” but he’s not the only actor in the cast to take on multiple identities.
The limited series follows a North Vietnamese communist spy known simply as Captain (Hoa Xuande) who is integrated into a South Vietnamese community in Los Angeles after the war. Duy Nguyễn plays Man, the captain’s master, his best friend and the only link he has left with his country of origin. But for fear of being watched, the two men send decoy letters addressed to the captain’s fictitious aunt. Any real truth must be brief, focused, and written in invisible ink. So when the Captain feels lonely and needs connection, he has imaginary conversations with the man as if he were with him in person.
“I realized that the Man in the Captain’s head is not the man he is in real life,” explains Nguyễn. This required him to understand not only his “real” character, but also a plethora of alternate selves based as much on the captain as the man.
“The version of the Man in his head really depends on what the captain needs at that moment from his friend, what he imagines his friend would say,” Nguyễn continues. “I had to read the script over and over again to understand: ‘What is the captain thinking?’ »
These imaginary scenarios play out throughout the seven episodes of “The Sympathizer,” which account for a large portion of Nguyễn’s screen time. “We shot all the imaginary scenes in one day – three directors in a day,” he said. “It was intense, like three scenes from director Park (Chan-wook), then director Marc (Munden) came for three scenes and director Fernando (Meirelles) for one scene. Then episode 7 is the time where you see the real man.
In the finale, titled “Endings Are Hard, Aren’t They?” “, Many things have changed.
Although Man asked him to stay in America, the captain is desperate for his homeland and enlists in an attack on the communists designed by the general (Toan Le) so he can return to Vietnam. He still has not revealed his affiliations to Bon (Fred Nguyen Khan), a loyal South Vietnamese soldier with whom he and Man have been friends since childhood, when they are both captured and taken to a communist re-education camp . There, the captain hopes to be recognized as a communist and freed. Instead, he is forced to spend a year writing a detailed confession to prove himself – even though the camp leader turns out to be a masked man, whose face has been completely distorted by a napalm accident.
“I had to create a completely different character to get to that point at the end, where he’s broken and burned,” says Nguyễn. “But he always tries to be the person his friends remember, even if they don’t recognize him. This is the most heartbreaking part.
Like the Captain, the Man has also become a sort of “sympathizer”. He subjects the captain to intense torture, in part to keep their friendship a secret from his colleagues. But the cruelty also seems to be a way of getting the captain to admit something the man realized long ago: it is difficult to be proud of one’s victory in war when it came at a human cost. as high.
Toward the end, Man refers the captain to a famous quote from President Ho Chi Minh: “Nothing is more precious than freedom and independence,” a principle in which the captain deeply believes. But the Man tells him that in reality East something more valuable, and he gets three guesses before he can “graduate.”
After losing two essays on “belief” and “family,” his friend said to him: “Read the sentence carefully. The answer lies within.
Nothing, perhaps even nothingness, that is what is most precious. But what does that mean? Before the Captain realizes the answer, he imagines that he is sitting next to Major (Phanxine) and Sonny (Alan Trong), the two people he murdered as a spy. Is “nothing” death? Is it the absence of politics? Either way, that’s all the captain needs to hear. The man apologizes for making the lesson “so tortuous”, explaining that he discovered for himself that he had to learn it “the hard way”, and the captain grabs Bon and escapes from the camp. The man watches them flee, leaving behind all allegiance to one side or the other.
As part of an extensive interview on “The Sympathizer” and its historical significance, Variety spoke with Hoa Xuande and Duy Nguyễn as well as Sandra Oh, who produces the series and stars in five previous episodes, for nothing.
The quote “Nothing is more precious than freedom and independence” and focusing on “nothing” – what did that mean to you? What conversations have you had about this? How did you take that out of the show?
Hoa Xuandé: It’s very funny, because that’s the phrase that President Ho Chi Minh said when he was trying to lead the Vietnamese independence movement, and that phrase is taken from American ideology. But the way it is used in the context of the liberation of Vietnam has a very different meaning than how we see it in the West. When we think, “Nothing is more precious than freedom and independence,” we think of freedom and independence. That’s how we were taught, and it’s not wrong, but in the show, and the captain realized that the crux of that sentence is the Nothing. Which almost refers to the fact that you have to humble yourself.
It’s despair. It’s the fact that all this effort to achieve this ideal has caused so much destruction, torn people apart, put so many people in danger that was this cause worth it? The idea that “nothing” is actually above freedom and independence. We must try to understand that we are no better than the ideals we claim all the time.
Duy Nguyen: That’s why I read the book 10 times. Just to understand this part. I had to understand it to understand the whole book. I just took it from the character’s point of view: why is the man trying to teach the captain that nothing is more valuable than independence and freedom? He is an idealist. A revolutionary. He believed that waging war, fighting the Americans, meant bringing him his freedom. But in episode 7, you see him taking away freedom and independence from the very people he was trying to free. The Vietnamese people. He captured them. He realized how meaningless all this pain was. This is the lesson he wants to teach his friend, and the only way to teach him is to take away his freedom.
Sandra Oh: If you’ve read the book, that last quarter is pages and pages and pages of torture between these two. I think the Man has already moved past where the Captain is and is trying to come to some sort of understanding. What East Nothing? It’s a myriad of things. I have my own interpretation – almost a Buddhist feeling of emptiness. This other space is actually bigger than these ideals. Man, through torture he pushes you into the trauma. You hear all these things, you think, “I’m doing things right,” but he pushes you: what makes you where you are?
In a way, this is when the Captain really begins to break free. And what’s in that space – the interpretation of nothing – I don’t think we should really define it yet, but that’s the key. It’s a very internal, very dense look at purpose, freedom, how to continue your journey. When the man says, “It’s right in front of you,” that’s also a big part of the lesson. It’s right in front of us.
Nguyen: And also, right in front of you, it’s me. Look what that did to me.
Xuande Yeah. You are nothing.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Gn entert
News Source : variety.com
