The Thin Blue Line

In this documentary by Errol Morris that argues that Randall Adams, a man accused of murdering a police officer, is innocent, and that the truly guilty party is David Harris, a young man with a long criminal history.  This documentary is very interesting due to its reflexive style, its focus on the difference between perception and truth, and its omission of information in service of its politics. There’s a huge difference between perception and truth.  The parts of this movie that make this point most powerfully are the crime scene reenactments.  Each reenactment shows the even happening as the subject being interviewed describes it, and each reenactment is different.  In one reenactment, as the other police officer at the scene of the crime recalls that the make and model of the car were different than she originally remembered, the audience actually sees the car morph in mid-shot to a different type of car. This movie shows us  how justice is denied in our system because people rely upon what they wanted to have happened, rather than what actually happened.  People had an easier time perceiving Adams as a killer than they did Harris, and so they wrongfully convicted Adams.