Vietnamese voices finally being heard
Actor tells of working with ensemble of his countrymen in first US role
Vietnamese filmmaker Phanxine remembers exactly when he decided to make films in his native country rather than Hollywood.
It was in 2008 and someone from a studio visiting his University of Southern California film class told him his story pitch about a Vietnamese-American woman travelling the US would only work if the heroine was white.
Having a white star would give the film “a broader audience”, Phanxine recalls being told.
“It is the moment I realised if I want to stay in America, I have to do a movie about Caucasian people,” says the former journalist, who goes by his one-name moniker Phanxine professionally. “The reason I want to be a filmmaker is because I want to tell the story that I know, the story about my people, my country, my culture.”
Now, more than 15 years later, Phanxine is doing his first US-side professional acting job in HBO’s adaptation of The Sympathizer – American writer Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2015 novel set during the Vietnam war – with an ensemble of fellow Vietnamese actors.
For decades, Vietnamese have often been relegated to the background in popular cinematic depictions of the Vietnam war. Films such as Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now typically only examined the price the US and its soldiers paid.
In the adaptation of the novel, it is South Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers’ struggles with loss, loyalty and identity that take centre stage.
For some cast members, there were initial concerns about stirring up what was a traumatic time even for their own families, but they decided not to shy away from the sense of responsibility they feel to shape the narrative.
Sprinkled with drama, comedy and espionage, the series follows a half-French, half-Vietnamese spy for the Viet Cong known as The Captain. Played by Hoa Xuande, Captain embeds himself in the South Vietnamese community, even becoming part of a post-war refugee community that settles in Los Angeles.
Robert Downey Jnr, who is also a producer, plays four different white antagonists. Sandra Oh co-stars.
Phanxine, who plays Major, an assistant to a South Vietnamese general who also relocates to the US, actually wanted to keep his involvement with the series private for as long as possible to put off any political backlash.
Even now in Vietnam, any media touching on the war is heavily scrutinised. The book faced difficulties getting published in Vietnam because of its portrayal of what Vietnamese see more as “the American War”. Some friends even advised Phanxine not to take part in the project.
“During the shoot, I met several people really upset about how the Vietnamese-Americans [are] portrayed in this series. I totally understand that,” Phanxine says. “What comes will come.”
Fred Nguyen Khan plays Bon, a South Vietnamese soldier whose character suffers a great loss. He was among several who filmed a harrowing re-enactment of the fall of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City).
Khan, 41, acknowledges that the show could be triggering for some of his relatives, but that does not have to be a bad thing.
“I think it’s going to be a real cathartic moment for a lot of them. And if we can just talk about it afterwards and start healing that, I think that is a win,” he says.
The production actually helped him connect more with his heritage. When Khan returned from the eight-month shoot in Thailand, he threw his parents with his heightened fluency in Vietnamese.
“It was like I got so much better. It’s like I went through this training montage from the Rocky movies,” Khan says.
“I felt a new appreciation for Vietnamese culture by being exposed to all these amazing Vietnamese actors. [It’s] something I never felt before – coming from Montreal, Quebec.”
Vietnamese are almost erased in a lot of films, documentaries and history books on the war, says Long T. Bui, a professor of global and international studies at the University of California, Irvine. They also fail to show how perspectives vary in the community between those who identify as South versus North Vietnamese. “People are hoping The
Sympathizer is a success, but also that it will open the doors for more movies and TV shows about the Vietnamese-American experience,” says Bui, who is acquainted with Nguyen, the author. “So people are hoping this is the gateway.”
Phanxine, a well-known filmmaker in Vietnam, has watched Hollywood pictures such as Apocalypse Now, Born on the Fourth of July and, more recently, Da 5 Bloods. Some of them seemed “ridiculous” to him.
“I can see American filmmakers, when they do a movie about the Vietnam war, still do not look at the world like how Vietnamese people look at it,” he says.
For Khan, the only Vietnamese actors he recalls growing up were Thuy Trang, who was the yellow Power Ranger, and Dustin Nguyen, from 1980s TV series 21
Jump Street. He knows some Vietnamese viewers and actors may be looking to The Sympathizer to push progress forward with fleshed-out, flawed characters.
“They should have expectations … If you have no expectations, then you’re not excited about it,” Khan says. “I have expectations, too.”
I want to tell the story that I know, the story about my people, my country, my culture PHANXINE, FILMMAKER AND ACTOR