The Thin Blue Line (1988)

The Thin Blue Line is the most revolutionary film you may never have heard of. Made over 20years ago, it completely changed the art of documentary. You can stem the influence to probably any documentry made for tv or cinema made today. <br>
It came from a time when documentaries were not theatrical commodities like they are today and were mainly exercises in talking-head interviews cut with relevant footage. What Errol Morris did was add a distinctive sense of narrative and use reconstruction as an tool to effect that. So I'm not suggesting that he invented the <br>
'police reconstruction' but he certainly popularised it and more over no one had used documentry as a story narrative form on that scale really before instead of the usual broad informational format. <br>
The crux of the film is the true life story of a cop in Dallas, who was shot point-blank after the routine stop of a car and the conviction and appeal of Randall Adams, who was found guilty of the crime. <br>
Was well as the ways ive described above, Morris uses a stoic camera shot to interview and that adds a sense of reality- i mean, for all my big talk about filmed crime scene reconstruction, you're listening to the story being told by the people involved; including the police, witnesses, lawyers, Adams and the other suspect, David Harris. Again, this was completely original to have a feature length true story being told by the people involved - now, it's common place on 10 documentary channels any hour of the day.<br>
And the film still stands up today; you're watching interviews that took place no less than 1year after the fact and though, at the start it's a lil unclear how is who or what is going on- you begin to pick up what people's motivations are and this is down to the sparce way, Morris and composer Phillip Glass add music over the film. There is no sweeping orchestra when Randall Adams is making the case of his innocence and no 'Baby Elephant Walk' style silly music when we hear some so-called witnesses out lie about what they saw; but in the end- this makes the experience of watching richer... You feel the sense that you are working out the truth of events for yourself.<br>
And I don't want to spoil it but the conclusion of the ended up changing the law...

I watched The Thin Blue Line (1988) on DVD via LoveFilm.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Leaves Of Grass (2010)...