Revisiting The Thin Blue Line

The Thin Blue Line is a “non-fiction” film that tells the story of the murder of a Dallas police officer and the man who was accused of the crime. The film is referred to as a non-fiction film as opposed to a documentary; this could be because the film has a distinct narrative tone to it, despite the fact that it also includes interviews. Parts of the film are reenactments of the night of the murder, shown differently based on the perceptions of the different people involved. The film definitely has the feel of a crime drama. Morris says in an interview in “Recovering Reality” that his reenactments are not to be taken literally; their purpose is to put “that night” in the audience’s mind.

Reenactments have always been a question with documentaries, because the images shown on screen are not really what happened, and the point of a documentary is that it tells a true story. Reenactments move a film further into the category of “based on a true story.” Some people are vehemently against using reenactments in documentary films; for example, producer and journalist Ron Steinman thinks that reenactments diminish the integrity of the documentary field. He admits that the documentary was never pure, that in order to bring in an audience and hold it, documentary filmmakers began playing with the form. But Steinman is one of those critics who refer to documentaries that include reenactments as “non-fiction” films. In his article “Mockumentary Flap” in The Digital Journalist, he says, “Frightened producers, distributors, theater owners and TV networks thought documentary films were dull, too often academic and tackled subjects that only a narrow audience could love. They were partly correct. No one wanted to watch these films, especially when they played in theaters, a rare enough event. They came up with a new catchall phrase, and called them the non-fiction film” (Steinman). When this new phrase was introduced, new techniques were allowed, including reenactments, which had previously been looked down on. Steinman fears that if documentaries continue to add narrative characteristics, they will eventually cross into the territory of mockumentaries (Steinman).

Errol Morris wrote a piece for the New York Times discussing his use of reenactments in The Thin Blue Line. Morris reconstructed and reenacted what may have happened on the night of Wood’s murder by using Internal Affairs investigator Dale Holt’s account, his International Affairs report, the drawing of the crime scene, and summaries of interviews with Turko taken at the scene. He focuses his discussion in the article mainly on the reenactment of the milkshake flying through the air and crashing to the ground. The milkshake is the detail that causes the discrepancies in the story told by Theresa Turko about the night her partner Robert Wood was killed. Where the milkshake was found indicates where Turko was located when Wood was shot. Her story is that she was behind the car, documenting the license plate number and other relevant information as was protocol in that situation; the milkshake lying fourteen feet away from the left side of the police cruiser implies that she was seated inside the police car when Wood was shot, then threw her milkshake out the window and got out of the car to fire her own weapon and attempt to help her partner. Morris said in his article, “The milkshake-toss for me is emblematic of the discrepancies between Turko’s account and what really happened” (Morris). Morris changes the reenactments as the story changes; for example, when Turko’s account of how many people were in the car and what the driver’s hair looked like changed between the scene and her testimony in court, Morris showed both versions in his reenactments.
Morris’s opinion on using reenactments is that they are sometimes completely necessary; “A story in the past has to be reenacted” (Morris). He describes his method in the article:

“I reconstruct the past through interviews (retrospective accounts), documents and other scraps of evidence. I tell a story about how the police and the newspapers got it wrong. I try to explain (1) what I believe is the real story and (2) why they got it wrong. I take the pieces of the false narrative, rearrange them, emphasize new details, and construct a new narrative. I grab hold of the milkshake as an image because it focuses the viewers’ attention and helps them to better understand what really happened. The three slow-motion shots of the milkshake – the milkshake being thrown, its parabolic trajectory through the night sky and its unceremonious landing in the dirt at the side of the road – are designed to emphasize a detail that might otherwise be overlooked and to focus attention on where Turko was and what she saw.”

Morris’s problems with reenactments are not with the reenactments themselves but with the way they are used. They become a problem when they are used deceptively, as in the case of Mighty Times: The Children’s March, a 2005 documentary that won an Academy Award. The filmmakers used vintage cameras, distressed film stock, and over 700 extras to make the reenactment virtually undetectable; most audiences believed that the reenactment was real verite footage. When the filmmakers were questioned, they admitted to the falsehood, and on further examination it turned out that over half of the film was reenacted. Morris does not believe in deceiving the audience. He says, “There is no veritas lens – no lens that provides a ‘truthful’ picture of events” (Morris). His claim is that it was not a cinéma vérité documentary that got Randall Adams out of prison; it was an investigation in the form of reenactments in a film (Morris).

Ultimately, I agree with Morris. Though the idea of faking a scene in a documentary film seems like a negative thing, sometimes it is the only choice a filmmaker has. As long as the audience is made aware that what they are watching is a reenactment, and the filmmaker is not trying to fool anyone into believing that the footage is real, I think that reenactments are perfectly acceptable to use in a documentary film.

Works Cited

Morris, Errol. "Play it Again, Sam (Re-enactments, Part One)." The New York Times. 3 Apr. 2008.

Steinman, Ron. "Mockumentary Flap." The Digital Journalist. June 2005.