I chose to watch the film The Departed because it is one of my favorite movies, so I would be dumb not to jump at the opportunity to watch it for school. The movie takes place in Boston, Massachusetts, and it is about two individuals, Colin Sullivan and William Costigan, who both become Massachusetts State Police. The only catch is that Sullivan was being trained by Frank Costello, an Irish mobster, to become a mole inside the police department to keep Costello safe. William Costigan is placed in the mob as an undercover informant giving information back to the police. Throughout the entire movie Costigan and Sullivan are trying to catch each other after learning there is a mole inside the department, and a rat inside the mob. Things finally culminate in it eventually being revealed that Costello was actually an FBI informant and that is why he was truly never caught. Sullivan and Costigan finally figure each other out and it results in a bloody showdown. However, the movie is not all blood and plot lines. It contained a few terms from our book; kinesics, paralanguage, and encoding and decoding messages. Kinesics includes gestures, eye contact, facial expressions, posture, and haptics. Combined they help get your message across more strongly and honestly, people use forms of them every single day in their life. Throughout the movie they can be found in abundance. Many characters in the movie use gestures to talk, most noticeably Frank Costello. He uses gestures when he talks about everything like when he talks about his surroundings he moves his arms showing around him. He uses his gestures to get his points across to the people he gives orders to. Another type of kinesics is eye contact. Both Costigan and Sullivan use eye contact when they talk to their psychiatrist, Madolyn Madden, who eventually turns into a love interest for both of them. They use the eye contact as to connect better and have a more intimate interaction with her. There are many uses of facial expressions throughout the movie. Quite a few of the characters use facial expressions to show their anger, frustration, sadness, confusion, and fear. One of the memorable facial expressions is when Madolyn is listening to the tapes that Costigan left her. On the tapes is Sullivan talking to Costello and basically Madolyn finally sees Sullivan for what he is. The look on her face at the start of the tapes is a look of confusion wondering what is on the tapes, as she listens further she portrays a look of shock, and then finally a look of disgust with what she had found out. Haptics, or what and how touch communicates, also is frequent throughout the movie. Costello is very touchy with Sullivan, which adds to why Sullivan feels that Costello is a father figure to him. Another use of touch, but in a negative way, is when they beat Costigan’s arm to check for drugs while talking to him, but they beat his arm as a form of punishment for what he did. Along with the nonverbal communication is the paralanguage and vocalics. Paralanguage is the voiced, but not verbal part of a message like pitch, volume, rate, quality, intonation, and vocalized pauses. A good use of pitch in the movie is when the Italian mafia thugs are trying to collect money from the shop owner that Costigan is sitting in. They have a lower pitch because they are trying to be forceful. Costello has a low pitch throughout most of the movie to lead to his intimidating character. Costello is also very loud; this would be the volume part of paralanguage. He is a loud person, which makes him come across as pushy and bossy, which in reality he is. Another type of paralanguage is quality; the book even gives Jack Nicholson, who plays Costello, as an example. The book says that he has a throaty voice, and that throatiness can make the person seem cold and unsympathetic. I think they did a good job casting Nicholson and his throaty voice for this part so his character seemed cold. With both kinesics and paralanguage can add meaning and depth to the message being sent and received, messages still need to be sent. In messages you need to encode and decode the messages. Encoding is the process of putting your thoughts and feelings into words, non-verbal cues, and images, and decoding is the process of interpreting another’s message. In the movie anytime someone talks to another person encoding and decoding is done. Some specific examples of where there are extreme measures of encoding is how Sullivan calls Costello, Dad whenever he calls him in regards to what is going on with the police. He does this so no one knows who he is talking to and Costello must decode this message and know what Sullivan is talking about. Another great example of encoding in the movie is when Sullivan goes into the suspect interview room and tells the guy to call his mom and tell him that he “won’t be home for supper.” To anyone else on the outside, they will just think that he is calling his mom, but in reality he is calling Costello to let him know that he has been caught and that they need to get out of where they are. Costello and his men must decode this message and understand what the guy is trying to tell them through the encoded message. I have seen this movie over 10 times, and never really thought about all of these terms and ideas while watching it. Keeping these ideas in mind really opened my eyes to a lot of little details in the movie that I was able to appreciate this time around. There are more examples of different terms throughout the movie, I just picked the ones that stuck out the most to me and I thought were the most interesting to consider.