This is perhaps one of the best documentaries you will ever witness. For it is structured in a way that the documentary aspect becomes clouded by fictional filmic devices and reconstructions of events that turn this away from mere documentary, and into a totally new genre that many film makers try to copy but will never achieve. The film score is also revolutionary in the sense that the style has been copied in so many documentaries and as recently as the Pauline Hanson four corners doco.

The Thin Blue Line examines the death of a police officer. The man on death row claims he is innocent, and Morris stages reconstruction after reconstruction, focussing on specific images and sending us messages through this highly clinical and coded visual imagery. He will focus on newspaper reports, he will focus in on an image of the gun, he will structure images in a way that will directly contradict what a person is saying. Actually, his structuring devices here is a brilliant example of how film can play with the notion of real time. The power of the cinema to document and to twist a story can perhaps best be seen from the devices Errol Morris uses in this film. However, this does not detract from the powerful subject material we have. By the end of the film, when we discover the shocking admission, Morris has built in us a certain anger. That this is achieved is amazing considering the clinical way he has set about presenting us with the story. However, the coldness, the clinicality, the 'objectivity', is not as it appears. It hides the rich visual language which is not objective. It hides the editing techniques which are used in a non-objective way. Perhaps this non-objective visual language is because while Morris was cutting the film, he knew of the final minutes of the film. He knew the truth, and he cut the film in a way that highlights (though you may not pick it up the extent of it after the first viewing) the 'justice' of the whole situation. Adding to this meticulous approach is the outstanding musical score from the composer "Philip Glass". Now, the score is so amazing it even moves in line with the flashing siren of the Police Car.

Rarely does a documentary film maker get to get as close to the truth as Morris has in this doco. That he has done so in a way that sparked such a high level of controversy, with many intellectuals writing about the blurring between fiction and non fiction in film. The Thin Blue Line represents the police. They are the line between order and anarchy. Funnily enough, many films also deal with this notion... order and anarchy. German Expressionism (cabinet of Dr Caligari - even though I haven't watched it) deals with this, horror movies deal with it in the internal sense. So, the title is very metaphoric not only in the filmic sense, but the sense in which it also blurs the line between fictional technical devices and non fictional documentary devices in film. In the end, we need not really concern ourselves with this, because even if Morris has blurred the lines, he has as close to a confession on tape as any person could possibly have wished.

92/100