THE THIN BLUE LINE (Morris, 1988)
Criterion Collection, Blu-ray, Release Date March 24, 2015
Review by Christopher S. Long
Short Review:
One of the greatest films ever made.
Full-Length Review:
“The Thin Blue Line” has been
justly lauded for its stylistic innovations, its giddy flaunting of
the truth claims of direct cinema, and its searing indictment of a
corrupt and incompetent judicial system. Yet the reason I have
watched this film more than any other documentary, the reason I fall
under its spell each and every time, is that is an eloquent ode to
the importance of evidence.
We are each a mass of cognitive biases,
constantly misperceiving reality and then misremembering what we
already misperceived in the first place, twisting it around to suit
our needs. This has led many post-modernists to throw in the towel
and assert that the truth is relative, but as director Errol Morris
has stated time and again, that is utter bullshit. Truth is absolute;
we simply do our best to avoid it, mostly because we don't much care,
partly because we're so bad at identifying it. It may be elusive, it
may be complex, but the truth is there. Whether we can ever get to it
is another issue.
The key to cutting through the biases
and all the other bullshit is evidence, the cold, hard facts that
exist independently of our faulty perceptions. The evidence will set
you free, sometimes from a metaphorical cognitive prison and
sometimes from a literal brick-and-iron prison as in the case of
Randall Dale Adams, cosmic victim of chance and human fallibility.
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Randall Dale Adams |
Adams was a bit of a drifter who made
the mistake of drifting into Dallas for a few days; on one of those
days (Nov 27, 1976) he ran out of gas on the side of the road. A
teenager named David Harris offered him a ride and the two hung out
for dinner and a drive-in movie before parting ways. Later that night
Dallas police officer Robert Wood was shot and killed during a
routine traffic stop. About a month later, Adams was charged with the
murder, largely based on the testimony of Harris, and then convicted
of the murder, largely based on the testimony of even more liars.
Twelve years later Adams was still in
jail, a death sentence (he was three days from being electrocuted at
one point) having been commuted to life, which is about the time a
former filmmaker turned private investigator named Errol Morris found
out about him. Morris was actually in town to investigate Dr. James
Grigson, a psychiatrist proud of earning the nickname Dr. Death for
the role he played as court expert in many capital punishment cases.
Grigson had happily steered Morris in the direction of some of his
greatest achievements on death row; there Morris met Adams and, after
initially dismissing his protestations of innocence, began to
investigate and found that the evidence didn't even remotely match
the Dallas County legal system's version of events.
Morris, in the midst of a half-decade
hiatus from filmmaking after the extraordinary career opening salvos
of “Gates of Heaven” and “Vernon, Florida”, knew he had not
only an immediate mission to complete but also a subject for his next
movie. He unearthed ample evidence both discrediting the
prosecution's case and pointing the guilty finger at David Harris;
his investigation proved crucial in eventually setting Adams free,
enough on its own to rate “The Thin Blue Line” as one of the most
important films of all-time though it was not the screening of the
film itself that played the pivotal role, rather the evidence Morris
presented to authorities.
The movie that resulted provides
evidence of another kind, of the delusions and fictions that rule our
lives, and that certainly rule our judicial system. Morris's
unblinking camera finds a judge who styles himself an upholder of the
law just like his FBI agent father who was in on the Dillinger
arrest, police investigators who just knew Adams was guilty because
he showed no remorse for his crime, a prosecutor primarily interested
in scoring another kill, and an array of unreliable witnesses with
motives of their own. Chief among the latter group is Emily Miller
who all but confesses her own lies on camera while presenting herself
as a savvy do-gooder who likes to beat the police at their own game;
her casual statement that crimes like this keep happening around her
all the time and that she always gets involved is one of those “I
don't know if I'm supposed to laugh or cry” moments so central to
Morris's work.
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"Witness" Emily Miller |
Beyond the biases of the individuals
involved, the film portrays a lunatic legal system utterly
disinterested in guilt or innocence, looking only for “justice”
at all costs. An officer has been murdered and someone must pay;
someone, anyone, it's all good. All you have to is find the right
person with the right story (if it needs to be coached out of them,
no worries) and you have your verdict, all nice and official-like.
Perhaps the most unnerving claim made in the film is by Adams's
attorney Edith James who believes the main reason Dallas County
pursued Adams so aggressively is that Harris was too young to get the
death sentence even if found guilty, and where's the fun, I mean
justice, in finding someone guilty without getting to fry him?
At the center of the insanity is
Randall Adams with his piercing eyes, speaking in accusatory terms
but with the distanced resignation of a man who still can't quite
believe any of this is actually happening to him. This is the
“Charlie Manson” and “Adolf Hitler” personality who would
kill and kill again, according to the testimony of Dr. James Grigson
whose degrees affirm his expertise and guarantee that his word will
determine the fate of dozens, all nice and official-like. The real
evidence was right there for everyone to see, of course, but nobody
wanted or needed to so, pfft, it just didn't matter.
Laugh or cry? Morris can process both
reactions simultaneously while embedding the absurdity of such a
process and the people who operate it into the style of his film.
Employing moody lighting and pulsing music from Phillip Glass, Morris
imbues the proceedings with white-knuckle suspense and the feel of a
classical noir with Adams as the haplessly doomed protagonist. The
film also returns again and again to a reenactment of Officer Woods's
murder with details changing each time: the make of the car, the
license plate, the positioning of Woods's partner, the other cars
driving by. It's an extraordinary device that illustrates the
shifting nature of memory and the unreliability of eyewitness
testimony, yet never deviates from a few provable truths: the gun,
the murder, and the milkshake. Yes, the milkshake, look it up.
Let's add another layer of delusion.
Putting the AS(s) in AMPAS, Academy voters decided this critically
praised, groundbreaking film (that freed an innocent man!) did not
even count as a real documentary because of its use of reenactments
and other fictional techniques which meant it wasn't literal truth
like exemplars from the field such as “Nanook of the North” (do I
need a sarcasm font for that?) Laugh or cry? Let's laugh because that
battle has mostly been won by the sane people over the past quarter
century with definitions of the documentary opening up to include,
well, the kinds of films that were always there from the very start.
They just couldn't deny the evidence anymore so, hey, that's
progress.
“The Thin Blue Line” is tense,
riveting, and sincerely and convincingly angry in its depiction of
human greed and stupidity. This is a rage against the machine, and if
it didn't fix the legal system, did I mention that it got an innocent
man set free? That'll do.
Video:
The film is presented in its original
1.78:1 aspect ratio. The high-def transfer brings many of the details
(close-ups of newspaper articles and maps, for example) into sharp
resolution and with a rich color palette that emphasizes the amount
of conscious design that went into the film. Grain is thick and we
can see a lot of detail in some of the darker scenes. No complaints.
Audio:
The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track has
two jobs: present clear dialogue and preserve Philip Glass's
exquisite score. It succeeds at both even if the overall result isn't
particularly dynamic. Optional English subtitles support the English
dialogue: when relevant, the speaker's name is indicated in
parentheses which might help since Morris never identifies anyone by
name with on-screen titles.
Extras:
The primary extra Criterion has
included is a new 41-minute interview with Errol Morris which kicks
off with a discussion of his “crazy thwarted career” and the
events that led up to the investigation that turned into “The Thin
Blue Line.” I can listen to Morris talk documentary and philosophy
all day long so even 41 minutes flew by and left me wanting more.
We also get a interview with
documentarian Joshua Oppenheimer (2014, 14 min.) who speaks of his
great appreciation for the film.
The disc also includes an interview
segment from the Mar 22, 1989 episode of “Today's 'Close Up'”
with Bryant Gumbel as host interviewing Morris, Adams, and Adams's
lawyer Randy Schaffer.
The fold-out insert booklet features an
essay by film professor Charles Musser.
Final Thoughts:
In short, one of the greatest films
ever made. Maybe the greatest documentary. Got an innocent man freed
from jail. And there's your winning shot.