Nonverbal Communication Analysis of the movie Primal Fear

The movie Primal Fear has many great nonverbal cues and verbal dialogues, making the plot and twist much more enjoyable. Primal Fear is about a boy named Aaron Stampler, played by Edward Norton, and his attorney, Martin (Marty) Vale, played by Richard Gere. It is located in Chicago, where Aaron murders the Archbishop of St. Michael's Cathedral. Marty sees the police pursuit of Aaron on the television at the bar and determines that he will represent him as his defense attorney pro bono. Due to the heinous way the archbishop was murdered, the media gave Aaron the nickname "The Butcher Boy of St. Mike's." The verbal and nonverbal communication between Aaron and Marty from the movie's beginning to the end changes drastically, making for a fantastic turn of events.

            The movie takes place in the mid-1990's Chicago area. The scenes go back and forth between the attorneys' offices, the courtroom, a bar, a jail cell, and an interview room. When the attorneys are in their offices, it leads to the assumption that they are working on the case. In the courtroom, they presented what had been worked on in the office. At the bar, the characters try to unwind after long, bad days. Most of the time, Marty meets with Aaron in his jail cell to get more information about his alibi and what happened the day the archbishop was murdered, leading to a sense of urgency in protecting Aaron and getting him out of jail. The interview room has a table and chairs where they set up a camera so that Marty can have a psychologist evaluate Aaron in hopes of getting something to help Aaron's case.

            The relationships in the movie can be confusing because the verbal and nonverbal communication contradict one another. Janet, the prosecuting attorney, resents Marty due to her sarcastic tone, rigid stance, and eye rolls, which she constantly greets Marty with. Marty tends to greet Janet seductively with haptics in their interactions. The proxemics between the characters, when they communicate, make it seem like they have a more intimate relationship. After Marty's formal greeting with Aaron explaining that he will be his attorney, Marty then starts questioning Aaron as soon as he comes into the room, getting right to the business aspect of why he is there. When the judge enters the courtroom, she greets everyone by pouring herself a glass of water. She is seemingly uninterested in being there and tells everyone to sit down, almost as if they did not have to stand for her to enter the room.

            The two cast members who are obviously from a different culture are Tommy, Marty's investigator, and Judge Shoat. They are the only black characters in the movie. When Tommy investigates Aaron's apartment, the manager asks how they are related. Tommy tells him that he is Aaron's uncle, which causes a weird look from the older white gentleman who asked the question due to the blatant cultural difference. The more subtle cultural difference is that Aaron is from Kentucky, although they are in Chicago, so his southern accent differs from the other characters.

            Aaron stammers softly, crosses his arms, and looks down when speaking with Marty through almost the whole movie. He gives off the nonverbal assumption that he is just a closed-off, scared, insecure boy. In doing so, he can convince Marty and the psychologist examining him that he did not kill the archbishop. Aaron gives off very little verbal communication throughout the movie, but his nonverbal cues can speak volumes, which is precisely what he intended to be able to prove his innocence. Nonverbal communication is often ambiguous or unclear. It can be challenging to determine how nonverbal communication should be interpreted (Hamilton et al., 2019).

On the other hand, Marty is very boisterous and can be crude. He loves the attention he receives from the media. He is loud, argumentative, and confident in his appearance. The other characters question his ethics because he represents clients they believe are guilty of their crimes.

            Although Aaron could convey the intentionality of his nonverbal messages to Marty, things still were not as they seemed. Just because we tend to place more stock in nonverbal communication does not mean we are correct in our interpretation (O'Hair et al., 2020, p. 104). The verbal and nonverbal dialogue switched at the ending scene. Marty was closed off, scared, and no longer confident. Aaron was roistering in his cell, confident and smiling at his feat to mask his communications enough to fool Marty. This proved that nonverbal and verbal communication work in conjunction with one another. If Marty had gotten Aaron to communicate more verbally than nonverbally, he might have seen the trickery Aaron was trying to use on him.

References

O'Hair, D., Wiemann, M., Mullin, D. I., & Teven, J. (2020). Real Communication (5th Edition). Macmillan Higher Education. https://purdueuniversityglobal.vitalsource.com/books/9781319321741

Hamilton, C., Creel, B., & Kroll, T. (2019). Communicating for Success (2nd ed.). Taylor and Francis.