Adaptations in Thin Blue Line

An adaptation is a film based on another work.  In the case of the Thin Blue Line the adaptation was that it was a documentary.  But this film is not a conventional documentary.  Although the interviews are shot straight on, head and shoulders, the camera has a very unique effect.  The effect of the camera is that it frames the subjects so that the audience looks at them very carefully and we can learn as much as seeing as by what we can hear.  Also in addition to the interviews Morris uses staged reconstructions of the murder of officer Wood.  A few examples of these scenes are of the car with no headlights, the pursuit by the police car, the approach of Wood to the comet, and the behavior of the officer who was with him.  There is even one of the slow motion whirl of a milkshake that flies through the air and falls to the ground soon after Wood’s is shot.  All of these scenes are great because we can actually put the story we hear into a video of what happened and what it could have looked like if you were there and witnessed it.  Morris also uses other kinds of images in the film.  In the part in the film where Adams and Harris are at the drive in before the murder there are scenes from the Swinging Cheerleaders which is the film they last saw.  But Morris still includes this even though he discovered that there was no late show on that night.  Lastly he incorporates pictures of close-ups of physical evidence, such as places and clocks visualizing the impossible chronology of some of the testimony.  We even see family photographs that reconstruct moments in Harris' troubled childhood.  There are also guns, empty streets, newspaper headlines, and all night food stores.  The result of all this repetitive footage is a well done documentary and drama.  I would rate this movie an 7/10.

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