Communication: LUTHER

This week I decided to watch Luther, season 1 episode 1.  The show opens with a white man running.  His facial expressions give the impression that he is scared.  He is in a place that looks like a warehouse and is running up.  The next scene shows a fire truck and police cars pulling up giving you the impression that they might be after the guy running.  I then see a black man running up as well following the white man.  Recognizing why the white man is running I automatically assume that the black man is a policeman.  The white man reaches a point where no doors will open and when he tries to cross over a ledge to find an escape route; the black man corners him.  They exchange some words and the white guy grabs a metal bar as a weapon  but when he runs to hit the black guy, a piece of the ledge gives from under him … SWOOSH… and he is now hanging, holding on to a bar for dear life.

            Thinking the black man was going to help up was incorrect.  He tells him something and the white guy shakes his head and he begins to stomp in anger… BANG BANG BANG... close the man’s hands.  The white guy says something that makes the black guy get on the phone and that is when I realized that the fire truck and police cars are not at the same place (warehouse) the men are.  He is on the phone with another white man and woman, while looking down at the white man.  He holds on to his face indicating that he is experiencing something emotionally distressing or extreme anger.  The black man must have said something to the people in the neighborhood where the police cars were because they ran into a house and started to look for something… They pulled a little girl out of a box and began to give her CPR; when she starts to breathe again it is visible that everyone takes a sigh of relief.  The scene comes back to the man on the ledge and now I believe it is obvious that he is begging for his life but the black man lets him fall to his death. 

            Watching the show on mute, I deduce that the Black man chasing the man along with the white man and woman in the neighborhood are policemen.  They are clearly after the man running because he has kidnap and little girl and stuffed her in a box. What I did not understand is why he did not help the man and allowed him to fall.  When I listened to the clip, I realized I was correct in my assumption and realized that the black man “Luther” let “Henry” hang on the ledge in order to get information out of him.  When he got where the girl was and the girl was alive, he listed three of the girls Henry had killed and watched him fall to his death.  This exercise proves that nonverbal cues are more prevalent in language than verbal cues because I was able to correctly assess the turn of events with no words.  The words simply confirmed and turned my theories into facts.

Youtube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPJX27bBDp4