The Thin Blue Line is directed by Errol Morris. To be honest, I watched this drama almost three times before and after, but I didn't watch the first two times, and only finished watching it in the last time. It is mainly the intertwined and complex characters in the film that confuse me, the design of their shots, the meaning of interviewing so many characters in the title, and I don’t quite understand the relationship between these characters. All these questions were answered the third time I watched the film.
The work uses the recording method of reproducing the facts to track an unjust police murder case 11 years ago. Because of Morris's own experience, he has been a private investigator for two years. There is a great interest in the truth behind it, which also caters to the essence of documentary - the pursuit of truth. But this traditional documentary is different. The scene of the police shooting and the court video no longer exists, so Morris no longer uses a simple copy of the incident to shoot in the film, but uses a "fictional" strategy in the documentary, through hypothetical. Means to create "real" such as the film according to the description of different characters to simulate the process of the police were shot and so on. In fact, this is not the real "truth", but the director's "fiction" which leads to the gradual presentation of the truth of the event.
In addition, director Morris also stylized some event details and physical evidence in the film, such as malt drinks, ticking clocks, family photos, guns, newspaper headlines... These are all endowed with a strange sense of rhythm , like the music in the title, gloomy. These are all related to the case, and the family photos suggest that David's motive for killing came from the psychological trauma he suffered in his childhood. And Harris is falsely accusing Adams simply because Adams refused Harris's request to stay with him in a hotel after watching the movie, because this is in some way consistent with Harris' childhood trauma, namely: a An adult man should take responsibility for protecting him. It seems that the reasoning is a bit absurd, but after watching the film, I really understand why Harris falsely accused Adams.
Morris once said: "Documentary cannot necessarily become a personal work like a feature film, with the personal stamp of the maker. Reality is not guaranteed by style or performance." The hypothetical reappearance of the scene, the way of interviewing the characters - adopting a silent listening style, I and he strategically put aside the investigation of the truth of who is the murderer. He slowly entered the secret world of everyone (criminals, judges, policemen, witnesses), and then cleverly conceived it into a documentary. Carefully structured, shot and edited into a non-narrative film.
After watching it, I felt a lot of emotion. This film tries to warn law enforcement that what the police should do as the "thin blue line" of a democratic society and centralization is to expose the truth, find the real culprit, and maintain social fairness and justice. It is not like in the film, in order to solve the case, adopt totalitarianism, reverse black and white, and let the real criminals go unpunished.
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