War blurs clean-cut reasoning despite the concrete "one versus another" description. "The Sympathizer" reminds us of this in its opening frames, presented in the style of aged celluloid dated to the New Hollywood era alongside text that reads, "In America it is called the Vietnam War. In Vietnam it is called the American War."
One, other, good, bad, upside down, right side up? These quandaries battle within the Captain, the protagonist of Viet Thanh Nguyen's 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and our primary guide through six out of the seven episodes of Park Chan-wook and Don McKellar’s enthralling adaptation.
