Performative Documentary

Performative documentary

Performative doc. (]980s-90s).' stress subjective aspects of a classically objective discourse.

-    possible limitations: loss of referential emphasis may relegate such films ~ to the avant-garde; 'excessive' use of style.

Bill Nichols, Blurred Boundaries, p.95

The fifth and final category, performative documentary, has a paradoxical status because it deflects attention away from the world and towards the expressive dimension of film. That is, reference to the world is marginalised and the poetic and expressive dimensions of film are emphasised.

The performative documentary does not capture the world in the same way as the other forms of documentary. It aims to represent the world indirectly.

The performative documentary evokes the mood or atmosphere traditionally found in fiction films. It aims to present its subject matter in a subjective, expressive, stylised, evocative and visceral (relating to inward feelings) manner.

The result is that the subject matter is rendered in a vivid way that encourages the spectator to experience and feel them. But, at the same time, we have to ask ourselves whether the events become distorted as a result of the way they are represented.

The subject matter in the performative documentary remains intact, but its meaning is shown to be variable. In The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris. 1988), for example, the subject matter is the murder of Dallas police officer Robert Wood in 1976.

A drifter named Randall Adams was convicted of the murder, while the chief witness against him, David Harris, has been sentenced to death for another murder.

Who actually shot Robert Wood, and how this event takes place, is open to question. The film is based on the testimony and memory of witnesses who purportedly saw the events. But these testimonies and memories do not add up. They are faulty and inconsistent.

Morris explores these inconsistencies by re­enacting the murder. Each time a testimony reveals a new or inconsistent fact about the murder, Morris shows a re-enactment which incorporates the new or inconsistent fact.

The Thin Blue Line is not therefore about what really happened, but about memory, lies and inconsistencies. Furthermore, these re-enactments are rendered in a vivid, stylised, and evocative manner characteristic of performance documentaries (Figure 8). The first re-enactment of the murder takes place in the first five minutes of the film.

·  The film begins with shots of the cityscape of Dallas at night (4 shots).

·  Shot of Randall Adams talking about his journey to Dallas in

1976.

·  Close-up of a police light flashing. It creates a visceral, pulsating effect.

·  Shot of David Harris talking about his journey to Dallas in 1976. He talks about stealing a car and a pistol. Cut to

·  A photograph of a pistol.

·  Shot of Harris talking.

·  Cityscape of Dallas at night (3 shots).

·  Shot of Randall Adams. He talks about how he met David Harris (Adams's car ran out of gas and he was picked up by David Harris).

·  Aerial shot of Dallas (Harris's voice appears over the image).

·  Map of Dallas.

·  Closer shot of the map (followed by two additional closer shots of the map, creating a jump cut effect as the camera focuses on the street in which Adams and Harris met).

·  Shot of a hotel sign (motivated by the voiceover of Harris: 'I followed him [Adams] to his room').

Interestingly, behind the motel sign is a billboard that reads change your life'. The events being narrated certainly changed Randall Adams's life.

·  Shot of Harris speaking.

·    Shot of a drive-in movie sign (Harris: 'We went to a movie that night').

·    Shot of Adams. He says: 'I get up. I go to work on Saturday. Why did I meet this kid? I don't know. Why did I run out of gas at that time? I don't know. But it happened. It happened'.

·    This is then followed by the re-enactment of the murder of Robert Wood. The re-enactment begins with:

·    A high angle shot of a police car that has pulled up behind a car parked on the side of the road. At first, it seems that this car may be Randall Adams's car that has run out of gas. After all, in the previous shot, Adams mentions that he ran out of gas. So the editing initially links the car to Adams. This is followed by:

·    An abstract shot inside the parked car. The shot consists of the rear view mirror, and a hand readjusting it. The shot is heavily backlit, turning everything in the shot into a silhouette. (The use of backlighting is a technique favoured by Hollywood directors such as Steven Spielberg.) Cut to

·    The police car. The first police officer gets out. The police lights on top of the car shine directly into the camera as they spin round, creating a strobe lighting effect that turns the screen red at brief intervals. The lights are emphasised even more by the soundtrack which, together with Philip Glass's hypnotic music, consists of a swishing sound synchronised with the lights. The overall effect is visceral, pulsating and hypnotic.

·    Close-up of a hand on the steering wheel inside the parked car. Again, it is heavily backlit.

·    Shot of the police car. The second police officer gets out. She shines the torch at the parked car/in the direction of the camera. The flashing lights on the police car have the same prominence as previously.

·    High-angle shot of the road, heavily backlit. The shadow of the first police officer enters from the top of the image as he walks towards the parked car.

·    Extreme low shot of the parked car's back wheel, filmed from underneath the car. The police officer's feet are seen as he walks by.

·        Close-up of a gun pointing towards the camera's direction. The gun is fired.

·        Shot of a drawing of a hand, showing a bullet entry point.

·        Shot of the gun firing.

·        Shot of a drawing of a body, showing bullet entry points.

·        Close-up of the gun firing.

·        Another close-up of the gun, this time as it points downwards and fires a shot.

·                  Shot of a drawing of a body, showing bullet entry points.

·        Close-up of the gun, pointing downwards and firing a shot.

·        Close-up of a drawing of a body, showing bullet entry points.

·        Shot of the gun being withdrawn into the car.

·        Close-up of a car's pedal and the driver's foot.

·        Shot of the police officer lying in the road. The car pulls away.

·                  Head-on shot of the police car. The second police officer enters the centre of the frame and fires her gun.

·                  Low shot of the car pulling away.

·                  Close-up of the police officer's gun, with the flashing, pulsating police lights in the background.

This re-enactment is followed by an additional drawing showing the bullet entry points, two portraits of the actual murdered police officer (one shot of him alive, one shot of him dead), two shots of his police uniform, showing the bullet entry points, a shot of a newspaper, whose headline reads Officer's killer sought' and, finally, three extreme close-ups of extracts from the newspaper story.

The dominant performative elements in these opening minutes include the following: the re-enactment itself; close-ups of guns, maps, newspaper headlines and pulsating police lights (whose prominence create a vivid effect that far exceeds their function): rapid editing (the jump cut effect created by the closer shots of the map;

the cutting from the gun discharging to the shots of the drawings is very rapid); exaggerated camera positions (high camera angles, low camera positions); the soundtrack (Philip Glass's hypnotic music; the swishing sound synchronised with the lights, the loud gun shots).

Other performative elements appear elsewhere in the film, including: the filming of some events in slow motion, together with the fact that the re-enactments are repeated on several occasions.

The performative elements of The Thin Blue Line create the same mood and atmosphere found in Hollywood thrillers - suspense and poised anticipation, complete with highly stylised images and soundtrack.

Through these techniques Morris encourages us to experience and feel the events. Rather than simply watch them from a distance. However, by doing so he also hypes the events for entertainment purposes.

This raises an ethical question about Morris's manipulation of the events. Does he lose sight of the events themselves in favour of giving the spectator a thrilling experience? That is, does he lose sight of the documentary's purpose of being informative and authentic?

Despite its performative elements, Morris's film did influence the reality it filmed. The Thin Blue Line shows that the testimonies of the main witnesses are unreliable and inconsistent, particularly David Harris's original testimony. Indeed, at the end of the film, Harris indirectly admits to committing the murder of Robert Wood.

Soon after The Thin Blue Line was released, Randall Adams's conviction was overturned.