Film Analysis: The Thin Blue Line

The Thin Blue Line is a reflexive performative documentary released in 1988, which is the time of telling, while the documentary centers around the murder of Police Officer Woods on Saturday 27th November 1976, which is the time of event. The Thin Blue Line questions the reliability of documentary truth. Director Errol Morris investigated the conviction and subsequent sentence of Randall Adams for the murder of Officer Woods. The intent, just as in a traditional documentary, is serious, but the form and style used is also an intense examination of truth and the representation of truth. The Thin Blue Line draws on detective film genres alluding to the conditioned expectations of viewers that affect their understanding.

Morris uses archive footage and his goal for using archive footage is that it adds authenticity and credibility as the documentary is a trusted source of factual material. Archive footage also enables showing of events and adds interest to the view. News paper clippings, courtroom portraits and old photos are used. Helps narrative by, for

example when the interviewee, in this case David Harris is explaining about his horrible childhood we see old photos of him from his childhood. This helps the audience to understand as it adds visual element. The drive in movie clip is a further reminder of film construction and creation of narrative. Reenacted archive footage is used as flashbacks and help the development of the narrative as they visually present the viewer each person's viewpoint and experience. These reenacted flashbacks is mostly used to cover the murder scene and involves repetition, as the murder scene repeated multiple times to not only show each person's view point, but the viewer gets to see new elements added as the police learn more about the truth through their investigation. An example an element that changes is the type of car changes after we are informed that the police were originally looking for the wrong vehicle model as Officer Woods partner, had made a mistake on the vehicle that the shooter was driving. Viewers are originally shown a reacted flashback where Officer Woods partner gets out of the car and walks slowly to the back of the vehicle, this is following protocol so that the partner would be in a position to help if something to go wrong. But the investigators later found out that Woods partner had instead stayed behind in the car drinking her chocolate milk drink instead of following protocol. This is another element that changed in the reenactments as viewers learn more about the police investigation.

Montages is used in the documentary as it incorporates material that helped to build the case against Adams. Montages help the development of the of the overall narrative as the montage is juxtaposed in such a way that the viewer is made conscious how ‘truth’ is reconstructed. Photos of the dead Officer Woods, newspaper articles of the murder and graphic of the gun. The black and white quality of these, common in documentary because because it is associated with journalism and therefore ‘truth’, jars with the often bright color of the film itself.

Attention is drawn to the fact that not in real time and there is many different shots to show this.

An example of this is when time passing is indicated by shots of a clock. Another example is an ashtray on the table when the police are interrogating Randall Adams that slowly fills with cigarette butts to show the viewer that Adams has been locked inside that room for a long time. When Randall Adams is explaining that Harris was always two hours off on his timing, explaining that he left the movies at 10:00pm, but Harris stated they left the movies at 12:00am, Morris uses a shot of popcorn popping in the movie theater to remind the viewer that the documentary is not in real time. Special effects like slow motion are used in The Thin Blue Line. A drink thrown by an officer moves through the air in slow motion, this is a vivid illustration of the way in which Morris can weigh event making the trivial

significant.

The Thin Blue line is a reflexive performative documentary in contrast to expository documentary like, for example The War We Don’t See by John Pilger. Reflexive performative questions the nature of truth and if there is only one ‘truth’ to tell as opposed to expository where the narrator controls everything and appears to know all the answers. Although like expository documentary, The Thin Blue Line gathers most of its information through interviews, but in The Thin Blue Line there are no subtitles and the viewer must deduce who the interviewees are through what they say and the way they present themselves, because of this the viewer is confused over who the identity of subjects and the interpretation of the information they receive also mimics the difficulty of discerning truth without assistance. This is as opposed the a narrator as explained above, used in expository documentary and appears to know everything and has all the answers.

While Morris tells the story from multiple perspectives, it is certainly clear that this isn't an unbiased account of the events. Morris went into production with an agenda and edited the film to frame a number of characters in a negative light, although Morris does this in his effort to present ‘truth’, after all Adams was found to have been wrongly sentenced after the release of this documentary.