Editor's note: The below contains spoilers for The Sympathizer Episode 4.

The Big Picture

• Hollywood fails to comprehensively depict the Vietnam War in movies, prioritizing entertainment over accuracy.
• The Sympathizer highlights the ego-driven motivations of directors exploiting war trauma for personal gain.
• Objectivity in war movies is debunked, as the show questions the purpose of portraying conflicts in a sensationalized manner.

Hollywood has long been interested in telling stories about the Vietnam War, as many of the most influential filmmakers of all time began their careers when the conflict was still active. While movies about World War II have been popular because of the straightforward plight of combating fascism, films about the Vietnam War have struggled to justify the United States’ involvement in an international civil conflict. This is part of why Park Chan-wook’s brilliant HBO miniseries The Sympathizer is such a breath of fresh air, depicting the complex social, political, and ethical dilemmas of the Vietnam War from the perspective of a Communist spy.

Set after the fall of Saigon during the last days of the Vietnam War, The Sympathizer follows a North Vietnamese spy known as “The Captain” (Hoa Xuande) as he infiltrates various infrastructural institutions. While The Captain’s early missions involve going undercover within the American CIA offensive, the fourth episode, “Give Us Some Good Lines,” allows him to bear witness to the production of a major Hollywood war movie. By illustrating the motivations of the creative artists and disturbing on-set antics, The Sympathizer examines the complicated legacy of Hollywood Vietnam War movies like Apocalypse Now.

‘The Sympathizer’ Points Out the Failings of Hollywood Vietnam Movies

After a brief introduction in the episode “Love It Or Leave It,” the Captain is recruited by the highly eccentric American film director Nicos Damianos (Robert Downey Jr.) to serve as a consultant on the production of his newest war epic, titled The Hamlet. While theoretically the Captain is hired to ensure that the film is accurate, The Sympathizer shows that Hollywood isn’t interested in earnestly examining the Vietnamese experience. The Captain raises points about how inaccurately The Hamlet depicts life in a Vietnamese village and even notes that there aren’t any Vietnamese extras involved. His perspective is routinely ignored, as the intention is to make an epic war movie designed to appeal to American audiences.

Thanks to one of Downey Jr.’s greatest performances, The Sympathizer illustrates how directors like Damianos utilize the trauma of the Vietnam War to boost their ego. Damianos frequently lectures the Captain about his own brilliance, stating that he wants to make an immersive war film that will allow the audience to experience the pain and anguish prevalent within the conflict. The issue is that Damianos has no interest in hearing the Vietnamese perspective; he sees them purely as victims and essentially treats them as props. Despite the film’s intentions to honor the horror that the Vietnamese people went through, Damianos is more than willing to insult and humiliate the Vietnamese extras that the Captain hires to join the production.

The Sympathizer also emphasizes the irresponsibility of utilizing real moments of tragedy for the sake of populist entertainment. Despite being relatively quiet when voicing his concerns about The Hamlet, the Captain becomes enraged with Damianos when he learns that his mother’s name is being used as the name of a character who is being assaulted; while Damianos feels that it makes the film more “personal,” the Captain doesn’t want to re-experience the trauma that he knows all too well. The lines between fiction and reality continue to become blurred when his friend Lana (Vy Le) is hired to film the scene; the Captain is forced to disrupt the production when he fears that highly eccentric method actor Ryan Glenn (David Duchovny) will attempt to assault her for real.

'The Sympathizer' Pays Homage to the Production of 'Apocalypse Now'

The Captain’s experiences making The Hamlet are a clear parallel to the chaotic production of Apocalypse Now, which infamously drove director Francis Ford Coppola to his breaking point. Coppola’s ambitious war epic was beset with delays, malfunctioning technology, and constant rewrites; in many ways, the journey of obsession and isolation that he took making the film mirrors the arc of Apocalypse Now’s protagonist, Captain Willard (Martin Sheen). Apocalypse Now has been the source of debates over whether the ends justify the means. The Sympathizer complicates this debate because of the similarities between Coppola and Damianos; while Damianos may not have Coppola’s talent, he certainly shares a sense of ego.

The Sympathizer also alludes to Marlon Brando's infamous method acting on the set of Apocalypse Now. While it’s cited as one of his best performances, Brando’s process of getting into character to play the volatile Colonel Walter Kurtz made the film’s production even more difficult. The Sympathizer questions the merits of method acting by showing how intolerable Glenn’s behavior becomes on set; while he claims that remaining in character helps to immerse him in the narrative, Glenn really uses his method acting to act like a violent jerk without ever facing the consequences.

‘The Sympathizer’ Questions Whether Objective War Movies Are Possible

While the result of Damianos’ efforts is not revealed, The Sympathizer questions the purpose of war movies, suggesting that even an “anti-war” film can’t help but sensationalize the conflict. By constructing a fictional story in which the audience is either rooting against or for a character, Damianos has removed any sense of objectivity from The Hamlet. Damianos inserts Glenn as the film’s antagonist and a heroic character played by soul singer Jamie Johnson (Maxwell Whittington-Cooper) as the film’s two main areas of focus; in reality, ethics on the battlefield were far more ambiguous. The Captain’s suggestions about improving the film’s accuracy are ignored because they don’t seem “cinematic.”

Despite its criticism of the way Hollywood has depicted the conflict, The Sympathizer serves as a fascinating deconstruction of the ramifications of the Vietnam War. The Captain may be the point-of-view character, but he’s not a hero; Park and the creative team behind The Sympathizer reveal this era of violence and espionage as the ugly war it was.

The Sympathizer is streaming on Max in the U.S.

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