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overthinking entertainment
The Sympathizer: Give Us Some Good Lines - Season 1, Episode 4
As a reluctant consultant on a Hollywood film, the Captain navigates the egos and personalities of an increasingly chaotic production.
The Sympathizer Recap: Lost in Translation [Vulture / Archive]
posted by ellieBOA on May 07, 2024 at 3:10 PM
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Oh hey, I was just about to post this. I completely forgot! Also don't forget about the after-episode podcast - Viet Thanh Nguyen is a guest on a few of those episodes and there's a lot of good insight into his thinking.
This is one of my favorite parts of the book, and I think they did relatively well translating it to the screen. I think it got lost on that Vulture recapper though. Maybe part of it is that we actually know what the Captain is thinking throughout the book, but we don't see that much of the thought process on the screen?
I loved seeing a bunch of my favorite actors in this one, and thought they all pretty much nailed what they were trying to do.
The part where they start filming and one of the extras starts talking in Chinese, I was like HEY! and then they called it out in the next minute had me rolling for quite a bit.
posted by toastyk at 8:09 AM
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Hey, thanks! Yeah I liked it more that the recapper, I felt like his thought process was a bit more implicit than previously but not unclear.
posted by ellieBOA at 8:27 AM
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Came across an interview with John Cho and his reflections on his role as James Yoon:
What I can relate to in the James Yoon character, our connection point, is that he was trying to do the very best with this role that he had. What he wasn't doing was critiquing the bigger picture. Maybe today I might be more prone to, say, look at a script and go, "Whereas textually this character is not offensive or demeaning at all, in context depicting this person doesn't make any sense anymore or is inaccurate or therefore the very positioning of the story itself maybe is suspect or possibly racist." I can certainly relate to that character, James, [not] doing that. That's the way we had to think. To some extent, I'm still living it.
posted by toastyk at 7:15 AM
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