Errol Morris' Construction of Innocence in The Thin Blue Line

Errol Morris' Construction of Innocence in The Thin Blue Line Renée R. Curry California State University, San Marcos The Home Box Office video promotional campaign for Errol Morris' documentary The Thin Blue Line (1988) calls the film a "new movie mystery" and aligns it in the tradition of The Executioner's Song and In Cold Blood [in that it depicts] a chilling investigation and reconstruction of a brutal, cold-blooded murder. This reallife drama impartially sifts fact and fiction, bluntly controlling the evidence. The result will take you to the boundaries ofjustice and beyond. This promotion fails to point out, however, that unlike either of the two feature films in the comparison, The Thin Blue Line is a documentary and as a documentary, it explodes the concept of real-life drama by employing the actual convicted criminals, David Harris and Randall Adams, as the two key actors. Some scholarly attention has already been devoted to the phenomenological attributes of The Thin Blue Line (Mcllroy), its particular documentary style (Michaels), and the post-structuralist relationship between history and memory (Williams). My argument differs from these in that, while I explore some of the phenomena of the film and while I also discuss Morris' unique participation in post-structuralist film-making, I house these explorations within an interrogation of the technical and verbal paradigms of innocence constructed throughout the film. The "true" story upon which director Errol Morris bases this film tells a tale of Randall Dale Adams who spent an evening with a young man named David Harris. Late in the evening, one of these two men killed a Dallas police officer. Randall Adams claims that he was asleep in a hotel room with his brother at the time of the killing. David Harris asserts that Adams killed the police officer while he, Harris, sat as a passenger in the car. The Dallas police weigh the evidence and decide that Randall Adams pulled the trigger . They try him, convict him, and sentence him to Death Row. Randall Adams still maintains his innocence. This paper argues that Errol Morris' film reopens consideration of the facts of the case regarding the murder of Dallas policeman Robert Wood by aurally and visually constructing innocence, 153 154Rocky Mountain Review Randall Adams' innocence, on the screen. To construct this innocence , Morris relies on ordinary "telling" techniques such as verbal monologues and newspaper graphics. However, he also employs cinematic techniques to construct Adams' innocence. He replays key reenactment scenes (such "settings" do not occur in documentaries). He surrealistically displays key psychological images and sound effects such as the twirling crisis light of the police car, the clicking "sound" of the ever-blinking red and blue light, and the slow-motion flying milk shake released by the partner of the cop being shot (such fantasy elements of filmmaking are not in the domain of the documentary). Upon release of The Thin Blue Line, the "real-life" investigation reopened. Neither The Executioner's Song nor In Cold Blood had such impact; they both remained in the domain of attempting to explore criminal psychology with a film audience after the fact of the crime. The Thin Blue Line changes perceptions about the facts of the murder case just as traditional documentaries frequently do. However, this documentary privileges the fantastical elements of cinema to make its case and thereby drags elements of the feature film into the domain of art as political praxis. Errol Morris claims, "There's no reason why documentaries can't be as personal as fiction filmmaking and bear the imprint of those who made them. Truth isn't guaranteed by style or expression. It isn't guaranteed by anything " (Bates 17). Previous to this film, Errol Morris directed two other documentaries : Gates of Heaven (1978) and Vernon, Florida (1981). These films remain distinctive for their "non-linear, anecdotal style and their dead-on shots of ordinary people talking plainly to the camera, with no intervening interlocutor to be seen or heard" (Dieckmann 33). The Thin Blue Line takes detours with a deliberate linearity by interjecting anecdotes, fantastical images, and dead-on shots. Morris also forays into obtrusive interviewing in the ultimate scene of the film when...