The Sympathizer–Displaced Sympathies
Based upon the 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer opens in April 1975, during the fall of Saigon. This American War– or Vietnam War, depending upon perspective,– unflinchingly depicts the ignominious and callous withdrawal of American troops and their Vietnamese aids on helicopters and ships crammed with desperate people fleeing the country, often in the middle of the night.
Straddling both countries on different sides of the Pacific, The Sympathizer flashes back and forth rapidly, in sharp cinematic cuts, from 1975 until...