The Thin Blue Line Documentary: Errol Morris's Challenge to Direct Cinema - Prof. Smagghue | Apuntes de Derecho Documental

Enrique Huelva Jimenez The Thin Blue Line (1988)

Bill Nichols' model has been the most studied and at the same time criticized in the field of

contemporary documentary theory. Its categories are based on the combination of filming style

variables and material practices, based on the book “The Social documentary in Latin America”

(1990) by Julianne Burton. “The first classifications were made from narratological distinctions

between direct and indirect styles, which evolved until they constituted four basic documentary

modes: expository, observational, interactive and reflective”. The modalities of representation are

basic ways of organizing texts, in relation to certain recurring characteristics or conventions. The

author insists that his analysis and the categories have a historical chronology, since the new

models are born from a dissatisfaction with the predominant model, in a certain time, although this

factor does not prevent coexistence within the same time of specific movements or documentaries.

Nichols affirms it in the following way:

According to Nichols, the Reflective Modality aims to raise awareness on the part of the spectator

of the medium of representation itself and of the devices that have given it authority. The

documentary is not considered a window open to the world, it is considered a construction or

representation of its own, trying to ensure that the viewer adopts a critical position before any form

of representation. Nichols considers it the most self-critical and self-conscious typology. It arose

from the desire to make the conventions of representation themselves more evident and to test the

impression of reality than the other modalities (in a first formulation, in 1991 Nichols established

four basic modalities from the book The Social documentary in Latin America by Julianne Burton)

broadcast normally without any problem. It is the most introspective modality: it uses many of the

resources of other types of documentary, but it takes them to the limit, so that the viewer's attention

is focused on both the resource and the effect. The reflective (or anti-realistic) documentary

questions not only the presence of the camera but the transparency of its language. It explores the

supposed objectivity and authenticity of the documentation through subjectively directed devices.

It is the most critical of documentary modes as it questions itself and is highly skeptical of the

"naive realism" of direct documentary that confuses appearances with truth.

In the film, The Thin Blue Line (1988), we can find representation of this mode such as.

Vista previa parcial del texto

¡Descarga The Thin Blue Line Documentary: Errol Morris's Challenge to Direct Cinema - Prof. Smagghue y más Apuntes en PDF de Derecho Documental solo en Docsity!

Enrique Huelva Jimenez The Thin Blue Line (1988) Bill Nichols' model has been the most studied and at the same time criticized in the field of contemporary documentary theory. Its categories are based on the combination of filming style variables and material practices, based on the book “The Social documentary in Latin America” (1990) by Julianne Burton. “ The first classifications were made from narratological distinctions between direct and indirect styles, which evolved until they constituted four basic documentary modes: expository, observational, interactive and reflectiv e”. The modalities of representation are basic ways of organizing texts, in relation to certain recurring characteristics or conventions. The author insists that his analysis and the categories have a historical chronology, since the new models are born from a dissatisfaction with the predominant model, in a certain time, although this factor does not prevent coexistence within the same time of specific movements or documentaries. Nichols affirms it in the following way: According to Nichols, the Reflective Modality aims to raise awareness on the part of the spectator of the medium of representation itself and of the devices that have given it authority. The documentary is not considered a window open to the world, it is considered a construction or representation of its own, trying to ensure that the viewer adopts a critical position before any form of representation. Nichols considers it the most self-critical and self-conscious typology. It arose from the desire to make the conventions of representation themselves more evident and to test the impression of reality than the other modalities (in a first formulation, in 1991 Nichols established four basic modalities from the book The Social documentary in Latin America by Julianne Burton) broadcast normally without any problem. It is the most introspective modality: it uses many of the resources of other types of documentary, but it takes them to the limit, so that the viewer's attention is focused on both the resource and the effect. The reflective (or anti-realistic) documentary questions not only the presence of the camera but the transparency of its language. It explores the supposed objectivity and authenticity of the documentation through subjectively directed devices. It is the most critical of documentary modes as it questions itself and is highly skeptical of the "naive realism" of direct documentary that confuses appearances with truth. In the film, The Thin Blue Line (1988), we can find representation of this mode such as.

Reflect on the representation of the historical world itself. Therefore, it is self-conscious in regard to form and style, strategies, conventions, structure, expectations and effects.
Reduction of the social actor to his interpretation of himself.
Rarely has ethical concerns as its primary interest.
Realistic access to the world. Irrefutable argumentation.
Link between the indicative image and what it represents.
It has a simple narrative structure.
It has an axiographic scheme that divides between good and bad. It emphasizes the encounter between the director and the viewer and not between the director and the subject.
The viewer reexamines and recontextualizes. Direct your attention to the viewing terms and conditions.
In its most paradigmatic form, it leads the viewer to a reflective posture of his own relationship with the filmic text.
It is a work of the text and not from the point of view of any of the witnesses.
The filmmaker's voice could be heard as much as that of any other, not posteriori but at the scene. He could act as a mentor, participant, accuser or provocateur among the social actors. Errol Morris is one of the greats when it comes to talking about documentary filmmakers, although most of his work is more than recommended, it was with The Thin Blue Line (1988), that he achieved wide recognition. This was his third feature film, which had a more serious and committed tone than his two previous works, and the result was such an important and influential work that it can be found among the first places in several lists on the best documentaries in history. It was a fundamental inspiration for other great works like the Paradise Lost trilogy (1996) and was the basis of the entire genre of modern police documentary. The Thin Blue Line (1988) is an important film for the history of documentary cinema. In short, in 1976 a police officer was shot dead after stopping a car on the road. After tracking down the vehicle in which the crime was committed, police found the two people who had climbed into the car that night and who were now becoming suspects: Randall Adams and David Harris. The investigation progressed and various circumstances led to Adams being found guilty.

Direct cinema was a cinematographic trend that consisted of applying a filming method that was restricted (in broad strokes) to making a film in the most natural way possible, which included the use of a hand-held camera and natural light and practices were discarded like the musicalization, the voiceover and the recreations, which had been common in previous documentaries. Following the concept of “The fly on the wall”, the idea was that the filmmaker observed everything but went unnoticed, limiting as much as possible the interference and manipulation of the material by the documentary filmmaker, because it was considered to be the best way to get to a result that was as close as possible to objective truth. Many followers of this movement refused to film interviews and instead tried to catch the actions that their social actors had off camera, as if that guaranteed a more honest result. Morris rejected all of these strategies, not only because he revalued the interview (which was already used in the classic documentary but at the time was seen as outdated or very basic), but because The Thin Blue Line fought this philosophy of pursuing objective truth and changed the way of seeing the documentary. Rather than seeking neutrality as a filmmaker, Morris took a concrete position on the matter and expanded the limits of nonfictional language. He came to the truth by a path of his own that went against everything that direct cinema proposed, which, added to the aforementioned, used elements that at that time were directly associated with the language of fiction. This included the use of a very cinematographic image, which not only forgot about the carelessness of the camera in hand, but also provided stylized shots, through the use of lighting, slow motion, music and staging. In fact, because of this the Academy refused to consider The Thin Blue Line for the Oscars, as they did not consider it a documentary. By itself, using recreations was frowned upon by direct cinema, but Morris took these dramatizations a step further by using different versions of these slightly modified from each other to represent the different testimonies, and all with great aesthetic care, especially in regarding the use of lighting. But in these dramatizations, a scenario is not recreated in which David Harris shoots the officer, despite the fact that this is one of the main speeches of the film, since these scenarios always start from the sayings of the witnesses. Avoiding recreating what actually

happened for the simple fact that this has not been expressed by any of the witnesses reinforces the idea that the truth is very fragile and is not always found in the testimonies. There are other details similar to these that continue to contradict direct cinema, such as the aforementioned use of music to ridicule a witness or simply to generate a climate, which was frowned upon by this movement since it is part of a manipulation towards the spectator that it does not correspond to an objective search for truth. Another interesting example is not to use the typical videograph with people's names to present them. Morris decides to solve it in a simple but more cinematic way and closer to the language of fiction. Whenever you can, when you want to introduce a new person to the narration, let it be mentioned by another interviewee, and then immediately move on to an image of that person just mentioned, making the viewer understand that it is that person who was being talked about before. It is a resource that perhaps today feels very basic or obvious, but that at that time in documentaries was simply not used. This distribution of information at the right time can also be seen when, having spent most of the documentary, they show that the entire interview with David Harris takes place in prison. This is revealed when Harris raises his hands (which surely the viewer had not even realized he had not seen so far) and it is seen that he is handcuffed. This is the foot to tell how he was jailed for another crime. By simply evading the handcuffs, Morris kept the viewer from knowing that Harris was currently in custody and kept himself from releasing that information only for when he was interested in making that part of the story. The same happens with the recording that closes the documentary, in which Harris (despite not saying it explicitly) practically confesses his crime, this was protected until the end of the film to maintain an increasing dramatic development while the viewer experienced the investigation of the case, since due to the forcefulness of the content of that interview, having put it earlier in the documentary, would have taken away weight from what was left of the story. As a last detail regarding the calculated staging, the backgrounds, clothing and colors seen in the interviews, were also chosen to transmit Morris's speech and vision to the viewer's subconscious. The thin blue line is a concept that represents the police in an expression that refers to the small barrier that separates the chaos of order or the criminals from the innocent, and to highlight this idea is that they decide to dress the policemen in the documentary with ties that contain blue stripes.

The Thin Blue Line Documentary: Errol Morris's Challenge to Direct Cinema - Prof. Smagghue, Apuntes de Derecho Documental

Documentos relacionados

Vista previa parcial del texto

¡Descarga The Thin Blue Line Documentary: Errol Morris's Challenge to Direct Cinema - Prof. Smagghue y más Apuntes en PDF de Derecho Documental solo en Docsity!