The Thin Blue Line

In many cities across the United States, there is a single police officer that is informally assigned to a specific number of civilians. Certain situations arise where these officers are outnumbered, and trained not to proceed into any situation without proper back up. It is necessary to apply a similar practice within documentary because without investigative research any nonfiction story will often fall flat or become contaminated with a plethora of one-sided truths. Analysis of the documentary film The Thin Blue Line, by Errol Morris provides the audience with several hallmarks of creative nonfiction through examination of the invisible forces deep within the legal system.

Our travels begin by taking a profound look at the central theme of the film The Thin Blue Line. At first glance, the main focus of the film appears to concentrate on exposing the truth about the murder of a police officer on a Dallas highway in the state of Texas. Within the first few minutes the audience is encountered with dark shadowy music which is continuously used throughout the film in certain bursts to establish points. A prime example of this is demonstrated near the beginning of the film immediately after extreme close-ups of newspaper articles were shown to provide a sense of reality and donate background to the story. One interview which is shown “directly after the series of newspaper articles” is worth mentioning because it sets the tone of the entire piece (5:10). “The day they picked me up. December 21st…they took me upstairs—what floor I don’t know—but they put me in a little room”(5:57). Errol Morris clearly and immediately challenges the viewer from the start to seek answers to questions about what really happened by utilizing the fundamental foundation of documentary film. “The genre of documentary always has two crucial elements that are in tension: representation, and reality”(Aufderheide 9). In other words looking beyond the reality element, Morris’s representation of reality reveals a two windowed storyline about the murder investigation itself. He establishes his interpretation of reality through a series of first person interviews with lawyers, police officers, and the perpetrators giving their recollection of events about the case. Slow motion reenactments appeared to aid visual credibility to each aural account of the shooting, but many where theoretical at best.

As a result of this implied representation of reality, the original point director Errol Morris set out to share, exposing the truth, has evolved into an apparent defense of Randall Adams. The creative storytelling method applied in The Thin Blue Line via a series of first person interviews, implicitly plunges audience members into a front row seat as a jury member, a bailiff in a court of law, or the average person playing a game of Clue. To clarify, the production style throughout the film appears very raw because it creates an immersed perspective of realism which again leads back towards Morris’s representation of reality. A shining example of audience interaction is due to the fact that The Thin Blue Line challenges the audience to ask questions along the way. Is this subject scripted to act or dress a certain way? What is the significance of the image or reenactment being shown? Why is this necessary here? The answers to these questions were the intent of the director in order to keep the audience on the edge of their seat. In brief, by interviewing significant role players the director, Errol Morris was engaging in both recreating aspects of reality and conducting living research/the defense of Randall Jones.

Ultimately, the format of the film The Thin Blue Line satisfies the hunger for reality by helping to restore order from a chaotic beginning. Each interview contained a timely release by hinting towards the innocence of Randall Jones. The witnesses brought up by the prosecution were deemed unreliable, and even the judge compromised his stance by admittance. It is this writers’ opinion that the least credible interview the filmmaker opted to include, the (Morris)tape recorder, was also the strongest. Despite the fact that the tape recorder is the weakest elemental argument towards an acquittal after such strong interviews have carried the audience through the story, it establishes room for interpretation, and the mark of any great storyteller is to keep the audience wanting more.

Works Cited

Aufderheide, Patricia. Documentary Film A Very Short Introduction . New York City: Oxford University Press, 2007.

The Thin Blue Line . Dir. Errol Morris. 1988.