RETROSPECT: THE THIN BLUE LINE (1988)
September 1st 2009 06:20
Falsely accused: Randall Dale Adams tells his story in The Thin Blue Line.
Ask any artist about the major motivation behind their craft, and the chance to make a difference in the world is usually high on the list. It’s particularly true of documentary makers, those humble toilers of the motion picture industry, who so often survive on curled cheese and sweaty doughnuts as they attempt to sniff a story from the morass of everyday life.
One non-fiction filmmaker who most certainly has made a difference is Errol Morris. Morris has a long list of impressive credits to his name, including the quirky Gates of Heaven and also the spellbinding Robert McNamara interrogation The Fog of War. The film that he will most be remembered by, however, is The Thin Blue Line: not only by admiring audiences and gushing critics, but more importantly by Randall Dale Adams, the former death row detainee whom he proved innocent.
In November of 1976, after his car broke down on a country road outside of Dallas, Adams accepted a ride from teenager David Harris. It turned out that Harris was driving a stolen car, and when a local police officer pulled the two men over to run a check on the vehicle, Harris shot and killed the lawman. In a trial plagued by perjured testimonies and misleading witness accounts, a jury held that Adams was the killer and he was sentenced to death by electric chair.
Adams’ story came to the attention of Morris in 1985, when the young documentary maker was preparing a film on the infamous Dallas-based prosecution psychologist, Dr. James Grigson. As part of his research, Morris met Adams and immediately thought him an unlikely killer.
Further investigation dug up a series of inconsistencies. Since the shooting, Harris had accumulated a criminal record of some magnitude, and the key witnesses were either too inconsistent or too vague in their descriptions of the events. Furthermore, much of the key physical evidence was either fudged or inconclusive.
So Morris set to work building this fascinating film. He took time to conduct in depth interviews with various stakeholders in the story – Adams, Harris, Adams’ attorneys, and the key witnesses all appear, along with the trial judge and various law enforcement representatives – before carefully recreating the various scenarios of the crime with cinematographers Robert Chappell and Stefan Czapsky.
The final result is a documentary that’s exceptionally well researched and fastidiously organised. Morris’ interviews are spectacular, his ability to peel the layers of his subjects before asking them the pertinent questions fascinating to watch. His technique doesn’t exist just to trap his interviewees – although there is a certain amount of clever manipulation going on – but rather to humanise them, therefore making it easy to understand how some of the whopping mistakes ended up being made.
Morris’ work with one flaky key witness is particularly impressive. The director plays on his subject’s obsession with the limelight, letting her unwittingly build a case for her own disreputability. She talks and talks, with Morris barely having to prompt her into the pratfalls.
The dramatic recreations are highly effective in The Thin Blue Line.
The different accounts are intercut with the quasi-abstract, film noir-esque recreations of the crime, driven along by a highly effective score from Philip Glass. There’s a ghostly feel to these dramatised sections, with Morris playing the conflicting witness accounts like the shifting shades of memory. The shooting is repeated again and again with each little variation carefully accounted for, the audience becoming a virtual jury, confounded by the looping but contradictory nature of the testimonies.
Morris slowly chips at the crumbling case against Adams, the thrusts knocking away ever-greater slabs of misinformation as he targets the truth. By the end of the film, David Harris is very much in Morris’ sights, and eventually a jaw-dropping confession is extracted from the young man.
It’s gripping stuff and perhaps one of the most effective documentaries ever put to screen. Little wonder then that a wave of indignation swept through non-fiction filmmaking circles when The Thin Blue Line failed to receive even a nomination for an Academy award. Looking back now with 20 years on the clock there can be no denying the quality of this fascinating film – it’s an absolute modern classic from one of the great documentary makers.
Check out Errol Morris talking about The Thin Blue Line below:
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Mountain Fog
Comment by David O'Connell
Screen Fanatic
Years ago I bought the Glass score on CD but it was mainly layered over with dialogue from the movie!!
Thankfully Glass' own label has released a dialogue-free version of the score too, even though it's not one of his absolute best.
Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
The Thin Blue Line is perhaps my favourite - I can't quite decide. I think you're right about the score - it's brilliant, but it's very much limited to the context of the film. Every time I hear it, though, it still sends shivers up me spine.
Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
Morris is superb at what he does and this is great example of his devotion to his work...though I'm not sure if the real life affect is why it seems so rivetting to watch.
Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight