The Thin Blue Line is one of Errol Morris' most well known documentaries. It has drawn large audiences outside the documentary world because it about murder, deception, and wrongful imprisonment. The film tells the story of Randall Adams who was wrongfully convicted for the murder of a police officer. Morris interviews people involved in all parts of the case, and shows reenactments of the events in each person's perspective. By the end of the film we are astonished by the extent to which our brains can deceive us. Part of the reason the film is still popular today is that as a result of the film and Morris' extensive investigation, Adams was released from prison.
Though the film was well received, controversy surrounded its 1988 release. The trouble came as a result of Morris’ use of reenactments in a documentary. Many people had problems with a fictionalized method of storytelling in a non-fiction film. The Academy even refused to recognize the film as a contender for a “best documentary” Oscar. This argument about the truthfulness of documentaries has been around for some time and Thin Blue Line brought it back into the spotlight. A frequent debate within the documentary community deals with the benefits of verité style documentaries (the filmmaker makes her presence minimal and creates a fly-on-the-wall feel) versus more traditional documentaries. Verité purists typically claim that interviews, direct filmmaker involvement, narration, etc. make films less truthful. On the other side, non-verité filmmakers point out that deciding where to point the camera at what time is filmmaker involvement and absolute truth is impossible.
This debate in the documentary world has grown somewhat tiresome to me, but it did make me think about the perception of truth in other parts of life. As Richard Taflinger concludes in his article “The Myth of Objectivity in Journalism,” objectivity is not achievable. Though most people have the same senses, those senses alone do not create experiences. Instead, our past experiences, cultures, education, and more contribute to our perception of an event. This is why two people can have such drastically different opinions about the same incident, as is clearly seen in the Adams case in The Thin Blue Line. My revisit to The Thin Blue Line will move beyond the documentary world and explore the perception of truth in film on a wider level.
The article “Balanced Truth: Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List Among History, Memory, and Pop Culture” discusses the truthfulness of the film it calls “the most successful film about the Holocaust.” According to the article, the films success lies in the presentation of the film as a true story. However, it is interesting to see that the Polish filming location of Schindler’s List is a popular tourist destination while the actual ghetto the film is about lies empty. This makes it seem like fictionalizing true events in film can be dangerous. Will people remember what really happened or will they only recall what they learned from the film? After a hugely significant film like Schindler’s List, why are other films on the Holocaust overlooked? In the specific case of Schindler’s List the facts seem to be right. According to the article, no historian of Nazism or the genocide has noted significant errors in the film. In fact, it even notes that, “even a more than 700-page biography of Oskar Schindler, written by a professor of history, though it resulted in an abundance of new detail and made some corrections, did not draw a fundamentally different picture.” Even Holocaust survivors said the film was firmly based in reality. Spielberg has clearly achieved something unique and important in Schindler’s List.
When I started this post, I hoped to research a more psychological view of how people perceive truth. Unfortunately, the articles I found were far to scientific for me to decipher. I would have loved to learn more about how the brain works and what it understands to be real. (Note to Polina: I feel like my first blog post was better because I was certainly more passionate about what I was writing. This one felt forced and I had trouble getting into the subject. Can we count this as my original and the other as the extended?)
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