Benefit of the Doubt, Review, Variety, 1967

Principal appeal is for theatre buffs, but has added interest as an individual British view of the Vietnam war. Unlikely for theatrical market.

A fair sampling of scenes from the Royal Shakespeare Company's stage production of US is offered in this film, intercut with black-and-white interviews with director Peter Brook and some of his actors, who discuss the political and artistic framework of the presentation.

A substantial portion of the potential audience, if reaction at N.Y. festival showing is an indication, will find this dull, but for Americans interested in current theatrical trends it could be a must, since it's their only current opportunity to see one of the most adventuresome and controversial stage productions of the past few years. A discussion of its merits as theatre may be outside the scope of a film review, so suffice it is to say that viewers are treated to glimpses of such events as the on-stage burning of a live butterfly, the portrayal of the Vietnamese nation by a writhing near-naked actor, and a rousing song about how, in Brook's words, "The Americans are able to blow the legs off children and then, with true, deep conviction, sew them back again."

It may be that Benefit of the Doubt fails as a film precisely because US is so specifically a theatre piece, and it might have been wiser for Peter Whitehead to acknowledge the presence of his proscenium and simply seat his camera in the front row. Instead, he makes an effort to get inside the action, and the results are seldom "cinematic."

The title of the play is deliberately ambiguous, Brook explains, meaning not only "U.S." but "us," the British, and its purpose is to reveal the nature of Great Britain's responsibility for an involvement in the Vietnam war. To this end, a great deal of research was done, and much of the script was taken verbatim from documentary materials.

Curiously it is this objectivity which has provoked the greatest criticism, since it seems to expose both the United States and North Vietnam as exploiters of the Vietnamese people. This point of view is clearly opposed to the war, and to American policy there, yet it is not "anti-America" or pro-Viet Cong. So the film can't be used even as a propaganda pic, and the most that even its most attentive audience is likely to say for it is that it's "interesting"—a description which may serve to bar it from theatrical release.

Variety

October 4, 1967