South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook wants us to picture fireworks while watching “The Sympathizer.” That image inspires his visual interpretation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2015 novel and as he explains to me through an interpreter, it recurs time and again onscreen.
The premiere holds the first volley during the fall of Saigon as flares streak the sky and bombs pummel the airstrip where the Captain (Hoa Xuande) is desperately fleeing with his best friend Bon (Fred Nguyen Khan). Now they’ve settled into American life and Los Angeles, there will be an Independence Day celebration. Eventually the Captain takes a job as a cultural consultant on a movie using pyrotechnics.
