The Thin Blue Line is a term to describe the role of the police in society - they separate criminals from prospective victims or anarchy from order, while donning a blue uniform. The line has become a symbol of law enforcement. But now, more than ever, when faith in law enforcement is at a violent low, the position of that blue line is being scrutinized. Is it shifting under duress? Overlapping over the violent elements of society? Is justice really being served or is evidence being manipulated? These painfully contemporary questions make the film The Thin Blue Line (1988) essential viewing again:
The Coen Brothers' Fargo begins:
"This is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred."
If I were to write my own opening to The Thin Blue Line:
The Thin Blue Line is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in Dallas in 1976. The names have not been changed and out of respect for the innocent everything has been told exactly as it occurred.
The real difference between the two is that the latter 'true' story really is true.
The real difference between the two is that the latter 'true' story really is true.
And the Coen Brothers' comparison goes further than just the cute piece above.
This film, released in 1988, is a backwards thriller detective story. It starts with the key event, the murder, and then investigates. What we quickly see is that the truth is hard to come by as more people's (not-always-morally-straight-and-true) motives become entangled with the case. The soft drawl of the Texan accents on all sides lulls, not as humorously as in Fargo but enough to think that the Coens watched this beforehand and enjoyed the stark contrast between small-town accents and blockbuster crime. All of the time, the accused Randall Adams, sits in his cell where he allegedly belonged in 1988, calmly recalling events.
The film is made up of key interviews and truly cinematic recreations. The recreations are not patronizing and really help us to refocus on the case as it spirals out of control. They focus on the details of the case and only show what the audience knows at the time which makes following the entire story all the more satisfying. It's a truly cinematic documentary because it plays exactly on what watching a film is: being an eye-witness. There is no narrator present so we watch events unfold and make sense of them. It's tense and inclusive. We cannot help put the pieces together while sound-boarded by a powerful Philip Glass soundtrack. The film was so comprehensive and accessible in it's investigation that it would go on to affect Randall Adams's case after it's 1988 release.
Films like The Thin Blue Line are made because they make a difference if not to outcome then to the awareness of the delivery and processing of the law. Artistic equivalents include Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Truman Capote's research and writing of In Cold Blood (dramatized incredibly by Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Capote) Werner Herzog's death-row documentary Into the Abyss and more recently in Netflix's Making a Murderer. Law enforcement should always be under heavy scrutiny from all sectors in order to perfect it. Discontent with the position of the line should always be voiced; especially when the two plains of order and violence overlap and angrily by all when prejudice is suspected to be present. But to break the line would be self-destructive. As Barrack Obama has said in the last 24 hours: "Attacks on police are attacks on all of us."
The eternal question that we cannot forgo answering as a society is:
The eternal question that we cannot forgo answering as a society is:
How far can that Thin Blue Line shift?
The whole film The Thin Blue Line (1988) is online in the link below: