Thursday, May 28, 2020

Legion: Music is everything


Portraying an onscreen psychic battle - two telepathic minds trying overpower the other - isn't easy. So many films and television settle for the combatants clutching their heads as the screen goes a bit wobbly, or having blasts of light coming from the forehead and hitting the other person in the face like a punch.

Legion, the television series based on the X-Men character, did a lot of things a bit differently. And while there was still some serious face-screwing and some heavy emoting when the mind-games began, the show also used music as a terrific metaphor for the telepathic carnage.

It used the thudding beat and soaring woodwinds of Bolero to lay down a mind-trap -



- had mental warfare in the form of dance-offs -



- and rap-battles -



- and saw a great evil defeated through maternal love and the power of Pink Floyd -


Each scene was stylish and intense, but the use of music was truly inspired, because music can convey deep feelings without using words. It make you feel truths in ways that language is too clumsy to do. In a battle of minds, it's the groove and the beat and the soul that matters, in all the best ways.

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