Sightlines · reception
How The Thin Blue Line was received
1988 · Errol Morris · The Thin Blue Line on Sightlines
The arc
Critics raved in 1988 but documentary purists balked at its stylized reenactments — and the Academy infamously refused it even a nomination. Now it sits near the top of every greatest-documentaries list, and the techniques that once got it disqualified are the genre's default settings.
What’s debated
The evergreen debate: Morris's dreamy reenactments freed an innocent man, but did they also open the door to every manipulative true-crime series that followed?
Its footprint
It's the ur-text of modern true crime — the slow-motion reenactments, the hypnotic Philip Glass score, the milkshake arcing through the air — a visual grammar that Serial, The Jinx and Making a Murderer all speak. It's also the rare film that literally changed its subject's fate: Randall Adams's conviction was overturned soon after its release.
Where it stands
A consensus all-timer — top five in Sight & Sound's documentary poll, National Film Registry, and the 'you must have seen this' entry point to Errol Morris.
Did you know? Morris, then working as a private detective, originally went to Texas to make a film about psychiatrist James Grigson — the notorious 'Dr. Death' of capital trials — and only stumbled onto Randall Adams's case while researching it.