The Thin Blue Line is a “nonfiction” detective story. In today’s view it almost has a television crime story aesthetic to it, for 1988 it was a dime that is top of the line. Errol Morris explores the murder of a Dallas police officer and the possibility of false imprisonment of an inmate Randall Dale Adams. The Thin Blue Line offers a different look into an investigation with the interviews of several those involved in the case along with reenactments to give the viewer a visual aid. The documentary doesn’t force a point of view down your throat, it more or less gives you the evidence that the Dallas police had against Adams and his “partner” Harris, along with the evidence to prove that Adams is not the person responsible for the death of the officer.
Something that I noticed in the articles was Morris’s way of answering questions. He was always inquisitive and informative for those interested in making documentary films. When asked direct questions about the subjects in his films he always gave indirect answers, in a style so that the viewer would be able to derive at their own opinion about the films subject. For example when he was answering questions about his upcoming projects and a question was about a character’s sanity, Morris simply replied “that is a good question”. Which to me is leaving it up to the reader to decide if they are to watch his piece on the man in question. Not only was Morris a good question answerer he had some very insightful information about conducting interviews and his approach to getting the best materials from his subjects. As a documentarian that is something I have had difficulties with, I tend to not know what questions to ask and think Morris approach of “if you leave people alone for three minute and don’t interrupt them, they’ll show you how crazy they really are.” (Vagnoni) is a pretty great way to approach a subject that may have a really great story.
Something I have found and had discussions about during the course of the articles and film is about what is really the “truth” and how what we know is right or wrong. There are many ways of formulating an argument that can seem to be true but be false. In the article about objectivity in journalism by Taflinge there was some good points about the differences between cultures and what someone may know as a fact or a “truth” another thinks is false or know nothing about said fact. I had a discussion about how this translates directly into documentaries because the viewers (who have a bias) are watching a film that was edited by someone else who also has a bias about the subject. A viewer is never going to find a documentary that has no bias, everything stems from someone elses opinion, the only possibility in finding a doc that doesn’t have a bias is one made from just security footage, no editing, no music, just footage that was taken. That would also be the true essence of “cinema verte”. The fact of the matter is that there is never full truth in documentaries, there are something edited to create a mood, a sense into the “real” and that there is a difference between documentaries ability to be artistic with the truth and how news is to be strictly the “truth” and Morris has good insight on this matter stating “A journalists job… is to ferret out what really happened; to ferret out the truth.” (Meyer) What Morris is trying to say is that a Journalists job is to find the truth out, a documentarian is more or less document some form of a truth and is to be taken for entertainment value as well as informational. Documentaries as an information source is reasonable when learning a fraction of the information about a particular subject that the filmmaker deemed as important, it is a form to be questioned and is allowed to be artistic with its findings.
The Thin Blue Line not only overturned a death row sentence for Adams, but took a true story, a interesting story and dug deeper than the journalists and officers clearly did. This documentary was about one specific incident and did a fair job of portraying it both stylized and truthfully. This form is a more truthful less obtrusive point of view, where as something like This Film is Not Yet Rated is a major opinionated and questionable source of “true” information.
WORDS TO KNOW:
Kaf·ka·esque
[kahf-kuh-esk]
–adjective
1. of, pertaining to, characteristic of, or resembling the literary work of Franz Kafka: the Kafkaesque terror of the endless interrogations.
2. marked by a senseless, disorienting, often menacing complexity: Kafkaesque bureaucracies.
ha·be·as cor·pus
[hey-bee-uhs kawr-puhs] Show IPA
–noun Law .
a writ requiring a person to be brought before a judge or court, especially for investigation of a restraint of the person's liberty, used as a protection against illegal imprisonment.
ag·it·prop noun \ˈa-jət-ˌpräp\
: propaganda; especially : political propaganda promulgated chiefly in literature, drama, music, or art
— agitprop adjective
os·ten·si·ble (-stns-bl)
adj.
Represented or appearing as such; ostensive
Heisenberg: from wikipedia
In the TV series Twin Peaks, Annie Blackburn (played by Heather Graham) quotes Heisenberg to the series' chief protagonist, Dale Cooper (played by Kyle MacLachlan): "What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning." (Season two, episode 20) This quote was originally delivered during a series of lectures at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland in the Winter of 1955-1956.
mea cul·pa noun
\ˌmā-ə-ˈku̇l-pə, ˌmā-ä-, -ˈku̇l-(ˌ)pä\
: a formal acknowledgment of personal fault or error
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