The best 100 foreign-language films, according to a BBC poll of critics

The New Neo Posted on by

As usual, I disagree.

Here’s who they polled:

The 209 critics who took part are from 43 different countries and speak a total of 41 languages – a range that sets our poll apart from any other.

The result: 100 films from 67 different directors, from 24 countries, and in 19 languages.

Most of the films on the list are acknowledged, tried-and-true, film masterpieces of the type beloved by critics but not necessarily by me. For example, number one is “Seven Samuri,” which (as with many although hardly all of the films) I’ve actually seen. But I found it a big snooze. Why do critics like it (and why did it inspire the making of “The Magnificent Seven”)? Because:

It introduced a culture that was foreign yet intriguing, and accessible to audiences weaned on Hollywood westerns. In later years, Kurosawa tended to downplay his enthusiasm for the films of John Ford, but his achievement was to combine the conventions of the western with a radical new fusion of Japanese genres: the chambara (swordplay film) and the jidaigeki (period drama)…

After all this meticulous scene-setting, the film’s final hour-and-a-half unfurls in an escalating series of skirmishes. The climactic battle, drenched by torrential rain, is a miracle of brilliantly choreographed chaos: combatants running hither and thither through the mud, galloping horses, spears, arrows and the occasional bullet, all filmed with multiple cameras, which insert the audience into the thick of the action. We always know who’s who, where everyone is, what they’re doing and – thanks to an infographic-style banner – exactly how many bandits there are left to kill at any given moment. There are casualties among the samurai, too, and, because we have come to know them, every death hits hard.

It’s not that I don’t sometimes like action films with all-male casts. I love “The Great Escape,” for example, one of my all-time favorites. But not this one.

On the other hand, number 4, “Rashomon,” intrigued me even as a child, when I first saw it. And nuumber 31, “The Lives of Others,” is one of the best movies ever made, IMHO, not just one of the best foreign-language movies. It should be way higher up on the list.

I’ve seen exactly one-third of these movies, by the way, so that’s not a bad sampling. But I haven’t loved most of the ones I’ve seen (“Amelie” was a favorite, however), although I’ve liked quite a few and admired quite a few as well. And I detested “Aguirre, the Wrath of God.”

On a list of my making, not only would “The Lives of Others” be much higher, but it would include the following highly idiosyncratic favorites of mine (some of them, notably the first, not so PC anymore):

Black Orpheus
Ballad of a Soldier
Two Women
Marriage Italian Style
Run Boy Run
The White Balloon (an Iranian film; the little girl looked eerily like me as a child and reminded me somewhat of myself as well)
Mandabi
The Emigrants; The New Land

I imagine there are more, but that’s what comes to mind at the moment. I tried to put the links up to the subtitled versions. Dubbed is convenient, but usually abominable. Don’t succumb to the temptation.

Anti-Semitism: “I just wanted to kill Jews”

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The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting has prompted a lot of speculation and discussion about the shooter’s motives for his murderous hatred of Jews, and about the basis for anti-Semitism in general.

But it’s not as though people haven’t puzzled over the subject of anti-Semitism for millennia. I’ve read many books and articles about it, and have come to the conclusion that most of the myriad explanations for it make sense, and yet that its root cause is ultimately mysterious.

Anti-Semitism seems to speak to some deep-rooted need to hate, and it’s almost as though the reasons for the hatred are secondary and the hatred comes first. I think that’s what was going on with Bowers, the Pittsburgh shooter.

Here’s what he said:

He screamed “All these Jews need to die” and said “I just want to kill Jews,” according to police reports.

I have come to think that “I just want to kill Jews” is the heart of anti-Semitism, and all the other “reasons” given are excuses and ex-post-facto justifications.

And now I find this piece by Dennis Prager:

And second, while there is no difference between the murder of Christians at a church and the murder of Jews in a synagogue with regard to the loss of life and the suffering of loved ones, there is something unique about the murder of Jews for being Jews: Anti-Semitism is exterminationist. Anti-semites don’t just want to persecute, enslave or expel Jews; they want to kill them all.

On Passover, Jews read the Haggadah, the ancient Jewish prayer book of the Passover Seder. In it are contained these words: “In every generation, they arise to annihilate us” — not “persecute” us; not “enslave” us; annihilate us.

So, when the murderer yelled, “All Jews must die,” he encapsulated the uniqueness of anti-Semitism.

Prager adds this:

For Jews to blame the most pro-Israel president since Harry Truman — the only president with a Jewish child and Jewish grandchildren, moreover — for increasing anti-Semitism is another example of a truism this Jew has known all his life: Unlike Jewish liberals, who get most of their values from Judaism, Jewish leftists are ethnically Jewish but get their values from leftism.

The biggest increase in anti-Semitism in the last 10 or so years has come from the left.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t also neo-Nazis who hate Jews. I would say that, whether Bowers was officially affiliated with such a group, he certainly fits the description from the information we’ve been given so far. Bowers hated Trump too, because he correctly perceived Trump as being pro-Jewish and pro-Israel.

But all of that is Trump’s fault, of course.

I do have a quarrel with Prager, however. In that same article he writes that “America has finally made the list of countries in which Jews were murdered for being Jews.” Untrue. America made that list [see *NOTE below] in 2006, when the Jewish Federation of Seattle was attacked by Naveed Afzal Haq.

Naq shot six women and one died, and he shot them because they were all Jewish—or rather, because he thought they were all Jewish. Some were, including the woman who died, but two of the women he wounded happened to be non-Jewish employees:

Witnesses reported that Haq began shouting “I’m a Muslim American; I’m angry at Israel” before he began his shooting spree…

Dayna Klein, a Federation employee who was five months pregnant, heard the shots being fired and as she went to the door of her office, Haq fired at her abdomen, but the bullet hit her raised arm. According to Klein, Haq then moved to another section of the building and Klein, bleeding profusely, crawled to her desk and dialed 911, despite Haq’s threats to kill anyone who called the police. Haq eventually returned to Klein’s office and discovered her on the phone, at which point he reportedly shouted “Now since you don’t know how to … listen, now you’re the hostage, and I don’t give a [expletive] if I kill you or your baby.” Klein told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that Haq “…stated that he was a Muslim, [and] this was his personal statement against Jews and the Bush administration for giving money to Jews, and for us Jews for giving money to Israel, about Hezbollah, the war in Iraq, and he wanted to talk to CNN.” Klein then offered Haq the phone and suggested that he tell the dispatcher what he had just told her.

Still pointing his gun at Klein, Haq took the phone and informed the police that he had taken hostages. He repeated his previous explanation that he was upset about the war in Iraq and U.S. support of Israel. He also said, “[t]hese are Jews. I’m tired of getting pushed around, and our people getting pushed around by the situation in the Middle East.” He also demanded that the U.S. military get out of Iraq. He asked if he could be patched through to CNN. The dispatcher told Haq that was not possible, and informed him that talking with the media would not alter U.S. policy. Haq calmed down and told the dispatcher that he would surrender.

The shooting by Haq seem to have gone down the memory hole for most people, Prager included. And I suppose that the left might have said Bush was responsible for what Haq did, because Bush started the Iraq War that raised Haq’s ire. But I couldn’t find any contemporaneous articles that blamed Bush. Maybe back in 2006 Bush Derangement Syndrome wasn’t yet quite as virulent as Trump Derangement Syndrome has become, although it was certainly bad enough.

And remember 2014? There was an incident that year in which people were killed because the perp thought they were Jewish, but we certainly didn’t have a bunch of pundits saying that one was Obama’s fault, did we?:

On April 13, 2014, two shootings occurred at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City and Village Shalom, a Jewish retirement community, both located in Overland Park, Kansas. A total of three people were killed in the shootings, two who were shot at the community center and one who was shot at the retirement community.

The shooter, Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., was a neo-Nazi. His motive:

As [Miller] was led away, he made antisemitic remarks, according to witnesses…In a press conference, the Federal Bureau of Investigation stated that it was “determined” that the motivation for the shootings was antisemitism. Several items were seized from the suspect’s home in Aurora, Missouri, including three boxes of ammunition, a red shirt with a swastika symbol, antisemitic publications (such as Hitler’s Mein Kampf), a list of kosher places, directions to synagogues, and a printout of the KC Superstar competition at the community center…

During the 11-day trial, Miller acted as his own attorney and made various disruptive outbursts, including self-incriminating statements. During the trial, Miller said that he was “proud” of the crime and made antisemitic diatribes

Miller was sentenced to death, but as far as I can tell he has not been executed as of this date. As a killer he was quite efficient; all three of the people he shot died. But as a Jew-killer, he was a complete failure, although not through lack of effort. But it turns out that none of his victims were Jewish.

In contrast, by targeting a synagogue, Pittsburgh shooter Bowers was far more likely to kill actual Jews, and observant Jews at that. He also killed far more people than his predecessors.

[*NOTE: There is also the case of Leo Frank, who was lynched in Georgia in 1915 mainly as a result of anti-Semitism. Frank, a leader in the Jewish community of Atlanta, was apparently framed, convicted, and sentenced to death for a murder he did not commit. The following then ensued:

Considering arguments from both sides as well as evidence not available at trial, Governor John M. Slaton commuted Frank’s sentence from capital punishment to life imprisonment.

The case attracted national press and many reporters deemed the conviction a travesty. Within Georgia, this outside criticism fueled antisemitism and hatred toward Frank. On August 16, 1915, he was kidnapped from prison by a group of armed men who were infuriated by the governor’s decision, and lynched…The new governor vowed to punish the lynchers, who included prominent Marietta citizens, but nobody was charged.

I would consider that a case of “murdered for being a Jew,” although it’s obviously far more complicated than a mass shooting in a synagogue.]

Guy with gun stops shooter

The New Neo Posted on by

In a Birmingham McDonald’s:

The shooting took place at the McDonald’s across from Princeton Hospital. Sanders entered the restaurant when an employee opened the door for a father and his sons to leave.

Sanders then opened fire in the restaurant. At that point, the father began shooting at him.

Both the father and Sanders were struck along with one of the children.

The father and a minor have non-life threatening injuries.

Sanders later died at the hospital.

There are very few other details about this. For example, was the father outside the building and then re-entered in order to engage the gunman? I’d also like to know more about the father’s weapons training. Was he an ex-serviceman or ex-police, or just someone who learned on his own and carried a gun for personal protection?

Also:

The employee who hid in the restaurant freezer called the father his “hero,” WBRC reported.

“Because I can only imagine how it would’ve went if he wasn’t armed,” he said, according to the station. “We might not be here having this interview.”

Of course, the mass shooting that didn’t happen is not nearly as big a news story as the mass shootings that do happen. But the former story should be a very important one, as well.

Can Trump end birthright citizenship with an executive order?

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, he can certainly try:

It was always told to me that you needed a constitutional amendment. Guess what? You don’t,” Trump said, declaring he can do it by executive order.

When told that’s very much in dispute, Trump replied: “You can definitely do it with an Act of Congress. But now they’re saying I can do it just with an executive order.”

“We’re the only country in the world where a person comes in and has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States … with all of those benefits,” Trump continued. “It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. And it has to end.”

The Axios article then goes on to provide a link to the fact that “more than 30 countries, most in the Western Hemisphere, provide birthright citizenship.” But what is left out of the Axios piece is the fact that those other countries are not first-world countries, except for Canada. It’s not as though Honduras has a big problem with what’s known as “birth tourism,” or with many thousands of people forming caravans to come to that country illegally.

The developed countries of Europe do not grant birthright citizenship to people born there unless (for example, in many of them) “at least one parent is a citizen of the country or a legal permanent resident who has lived in the country for several years.” In fact:

No European country presently grants unconditional birthright citizenship; however, most countries in the Americas, e.g., the United States, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil do so. In Africa, Lesotho and Tanzania grant unconditional birthright citizenship,[citation needed] and so do in the Asian-Pacific region Fiji, Pakistan, and Tuvalu.

Other countries such as Austraila do not grant it either. Basically, only Canada of all the developed countries shares our devotion to birthright citizenship.

I’ve written rather extensively about the birthright citizenship question, in this post as well as this one. The issue is hardly new, and what Trump said recently to Axios is not new either, unless the news is that very soon he’s really going to announce this by executive order. I tend to doubt that’s going to be happening all that soon, but Trump has surprised me before.

Here’s what I wrote on that issue back in July, and I think it bears repeating:

I want to add that Anton [in this article] suggested Trump do this [end birthright citizenship] via executive order, and I don’t agree with that. Of course, Trump could try it and there would immediately be a court challenge. I believe he would probably lose that challenge, but it would compel SCOTUS to clarify the issue, a process which has its own merits.

I believe, however, that the better approach would be a statute passed by Congress. This would almost certainly not happen, for the same reasons that the previous bill introduced by Vitter (I have discussed Vitter’s proposed bill in my 2014 post) did not go anywhere. If one were to be passed, however, it would also be challenged and would almost certainly ultimately go to the Court for clarification.

The safest route would be a constitutional amendment. This is quite difficult to accomplish, of course, but it would be the answer to those who believe that the Constitution’s 14th Amendment is properly read as requiring birthright citizenship even for the children of illegal aliens and/or birth tourists.

So I think it would end up in the Supreme Court, unless the Amendment route is followed. The legal issues are rather complex, and a matter of interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s “under the jurisdiction” phrase. Here’s Anton’s argument that the Constitution does not call for birthright citizenship:

You have to read the whole 14th Amendment. There’s a clause in the middle that people ignore or they misinterpret — “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” — ‘thereof’ meaning of the United States. What they’re saying is, if you’re born on US soil subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, meaning you’re the child of citizens or the child of legal immigrants, then you are entitled to citizenship. If you’re here illegally, if you owe allegiance to a foreign nation, if you’re the citizen of a foreign country, that clause does not apply to you.

If you read the debate about the ratification of the 14th amendment, all the senators who are discussing what this is meant to do and what it means are very clear on this point; I tried to point that out. I expected the left would blow up and get angry which they did. What I didn’t expect, at least not to this extent, and what was very disappointing was how angry the so-called conservative intellectuals got with me, and they essentially said any opposition to birthright citizenship is racist and evil and un-American…

Anton advanced a more detailed version of his argument in this article.

As I said, I’m not at all sure this is imminent. Trump may just be floating the idea at the moment.

[ADDENDUM: And Lindsay Graham says he will introduce a bill on this:

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said he plans on introducing birthright citizenship legislation sometime after the elections. The senator applauded the president’s planned move saying in a statement: “Finally, a president willing to take on this absurd policy of birthright citizenship.”

That’s the role Vitter used to take.]

Further thoughts on the Pittsburgh shooting

The New Neo Posted on by

Here are brief notes about the victims. All were over fifty, and most were well over fifty. I don’t know whether that represents a deliberate targeting of old people by the shooter, or whether they were merely the targets available to him in the room he entered.

It is terribly terribly tragic, an abomination.

There have been a host of shootings in houses of worship all around the world. This is for two reasons. People are often unarmed in such places. And hatred of certain religious groups exists and is often rabid. Jews are not the only ones so hated, but the hatred of Jews is very widespread and of great antiquity, and the reasons given are so various that it seems to be a very adaptable hatred.

Some people have expressed shock at the Pittsburgh shootings. I feel outraged but not at all shocked. There is plenty of precedent for shootings in houses of worship. And anti-Semitism being the phenomenon that it is, I am just surprised this sort of thing hasn’t happened more often.

That’s a terrible terrible thought. But certainly ever since 9/11 the writing has been on the wall. 9/11 was perpetrated by Muslim fanatics, and they are numerous. But there are fanatics all around and they take many forms, and it just takes one to commit a deed like this. A single person with a weapon can wreak havoc among the unarmed, as has been proven time and again.

Those who blame this on Trump are reprehensible, but their tactics were inevitable, too. To them Trump, who has been a great friend of Israel and the Jews, is the source of all evil. The fact that the shooter was a Trump-hater just means that Trump somehow triggered him (quite literally). The Resistance and NeverTrumpers can be quite creative in finding reasons to blame him for every awful thing that happens, and lack of logic is no obstacle.

I think it behooves everyone to learn more about defense against active shooter situations. Here’s an article that talks specifically about houses of worship. And here’s a guide for people who do not carry weapons, instructions on how to protect themselves nevertheless. I suggest reading both.

As Roger L. Simon writes:

Many, if not most, temples and other Jewish institutions I know in New York and Los Angeles are at high levels of readiness, often with police and/or security personnel standing by. In France, all Jewish organizations, synagogues, schools, etc. are constantly guarded by gendarmes with highly visible automatic weapons. It’s an accepted part of the landscape Given what has occurred there, they have no choice. Israel’s security measures are legendary.

I am not angry at the people — some are friends of mine — who are adamant about gun control, just frustrated with them. I understand the idealistic impulse. I had it myself for many years. But the world is not a John Lennon song. Pittsburgh showed us that yet again. It’s time to grow up.

Indeed.

Air tragedy in Indonesia

The New Neo Posted on by

An Indonesian plane has crashed into the ocean and all 189 people on board are almost certainly dead.

Articles about the crash are almost unutterably sad: the photos of IDs and cellphones found floating in the water, the grieving and devastated relatives, the rescue operations that are really recovery operations.

The plane was brand new, a Boeing 737 Max 8. Terrorism does not seem to have been part of this, however, because shortly after takeoff the pilots requested a return to the airport, which indicates something was wrong and they knew it. It is likely that the black boxes will be found.

Indonesian airlines had a poor reputation even before this accident, and there are reasons for this:

Aviation in Indonesia serves as a critical means of connecting the thousands of islands throughout the archipelago. Indonesia is the largest archipelagic country in the world…With an estimated population of over 255 million people — making it the world’s fourth-most-populous country — and also due to the growth of the middle-class, the boom of low-cost carriers in the recent decade, and overall economic growth, many domestic travellers shifted from land and sea transport to faster and more comfortable air travel…

However, safety issues continue to be a persistent problem in Indonesian aviation. Several accidents have given Indonesia’s air transport system the reputation of the least safe in the world. Indonesian aviation faces numerous challenges, including poorly maintained, outdated, and often overwhelmed infrastructure, the factor of human error, bad weather, haze problems caused by plantation fires, and volcanic ash spewed by numerous area volcanoes that disrupts air transportation.

RIP.

Potentially wonderful news for type 2 diabetics

The New Neo Posted on by

This could be really really big:

By destroying the mucous membrane in the small intestine and causing a new one to develop, scientists stabilised the blood sugar levels of people with type 2 diabetes. The results have been described as “spectacular” – albeit unexpected – by the chief researchers involved.

In the hourlong procedure, trialled on 50 patients in Amsterdam, a tube with a small balloon in its end is inserted through the mouth of the patient down to the small intestine.

The balloon is inflated with hot water and the mucous membrane burned away by the heat. Within two weeks a new membrane develops, leading to an improvement in the patient’s health.

Even a year after the treatment, the disease was found to be stable in 90% of those treated. It is believed there is a link between nutrient absorption by the mucus membrane in the small intestine and the development of insulin resistance among people with type 2 diabetes.

The article doesn’t mention it, but I would guess that the mechanism by which this works is at least somewhat similar to what happens with a lot of gastric bypass patients who have type 2 diabetes. In the case of those patients, the operation acts as a near-instantaneous cure, and works long before they lose any weight.

BLEXIT debut: Candace Owens and Kanye West make a fashion statement

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And quite a statement it is:

…Kanye West has designed T-shirts urging blacks to leave the Democratic party in a “Blexit,”…

More here:

West has done the work for his conservative pal, Candace Owens, and her new “movement” which she has entitled, “BLEXIT,” which is meant to represent “the black exit from the Democrat party.”

Describing the idea, Owens says, “BLEXIT is a national movement of minorities that have awakened to the truth. It is for those who have taken an objective look at our decades-long allegiance to the left and asked ourselves “what do we have to show for it?”

Kanye’s contributions to the cause made their debut on Saturday at Turning Point USA’s Young Black Leadership Summit in Washington.

They mean business.

Kanye West Blexit shirt

Here’s the website. It contains the T-shirts but also much more, including some links to information about history. For example, one link is to this article on some of the forgotten history of lynching:

According to David Barton’s extensively well-documented book, “Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black & White,” the original targets of the Ku Klux Klan were Republicans, both black and white. The Klan terrorized both black and white Americans not to vote for Republican tickets. “Of all forms of violent intimidation, lynchings were by far the most effective.” Republicans often led the efforts to pass federal anti-lynching laws and their platforms consistently called for a ban on lynching. “Democrats successfully blocked those bills and their platforms never did condemn lynchings.”

People like Owens (who is exceptionally articulate) and West (who is exceptionally popular) are potentially a tremendous threat to the Democratic Party and a new type of threat at that. For years I’ve noticed the presence of very knowledgeable and vocal black conservatives on YouTube, the blogosphere, and now and then as pundits on TV. But the black conservative movement never quite caught on as a popular thing.

BLEXIT and Owens are different. First of all, she’s young and telegenic and quite beautiful, which doesn’t hurt. Someone like Kanye West, who is not a conservative but seems to be pushing freedom of thought, has an enormous following and therefore may have an enormous influence. He was already considered cool (I’m so uncool that I don’t know if that’s the right word nowadays, but I think you know what I mean) and therefore his message and Owens’ isn’t immediately rejected as stuffy or ridiculous, although the press and the left are trying to say that he’s both ridiculous and crazy.

BLEXIT seems to know about publicity and marketing, too. It is fascinating to see this happening. Could it become a mass movement? I don’t know, but they certainly got my attention. That’s for several reasons, not the least of them the fact that this represents the phenomenon of left-to-right political change, one of my long-held interests.

[NOTE: Et tu, latinos?]

Bolsonaro wins in Brazil

The New Neo Posted on by

Remember the so-called “Brazilian Trump,” Jair Bolsonaro? I’ve written about him several times previously.

Today was the run-off election between Bolsonaro and a leftist opponent, and the the results are in:

Far-right lawmaker Jair Bolsonaro won Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday, riding a wave of frustration over corruption and crime that brought a dramatic swing to the right in the world’s fourth-largest democracy.

With 94 percent of ballots counted, Bolsonaro had 56 percent of the votes in the run-off election against left-wing hopeful Fernando Haddad of the Workers Party (PT), who had 44 percent, according to the electoral authority TSE.

“We cannot continue flirting with communism … We are going to change the destiny of Brazil,” Bolsonaro said in an acceptance address in which he vowed to carry out his campaign promises to stamp out corruption after years of leftist rule.

The former army captain’s rise has been propelled by rejection of the leftist PT that ran Brazil for 13 of the last 15 years and was ousted two years ago in the midst of a deep recession and political graft scandal.

Thousands of Bolsonaro supporters cheered and set off fireworks outside his home in Rio de Janeiro’s Barra de Tijuca beachfront neighborhood as his victory was announced. In Brazil’s commercial capital of Sao Paulo, Bolsonaro’s win was greeted with fireworks and the honking of car horns.

“Brazil is partying. Brazil’s good people are celebrating,” said Carmen Flores, local president of Bolsonaro’s PSL party.

I wish them luck. Bolsonaro, who was severely wounded early September in an assassination attempt, is a controversial figure, to say the least.

Brazilians were more than willing to roll the dice, however. They’ve had enough of leftists being in charge.

One of the very greatest dancers you’ve probably never heard about

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I’m puzzled by the near-obscurity into which Fernando Bujones has fallen.

Barishnikov and Nureyev are household words, even for a lot of people who know nothing else about ballet. Likewise, Nijinsky, who danced a hundred years ago.

But Bujones, one of the greatest male dancers of all time, and probably the greatest American male dancer ever? Crickets, relatively speaking.

I saw Bujones dance in person many many times. Bujones had the misfortune to die young, at the age of 50 in 2005, but that was after he had had a full dance career. So his relative obscurity is somewhat puzzling.

There are surprisingly few films/videos of Bujones, although he danced during the 70s through the 90s. His career (which began in his teen years; he was a prodigy who was offered a job at the age of 14 by Balanchine) also coincided with that of Barishnikov, who defected to the West around the same time Bujones won the Gold Medal at Varna in 1974. Barishnikov caught the attention of the public while Bujones never really did.

Bujones was born in Cuba but came to this country at a very young age. He had many sterling qualities as a dancer, but I think the most important was his tremendous ballon, the definition of which is an effect that makes it “seem as though a dancer effortlessly becomes airborne, floats in the air, and lands softly.” Neat trick, eh? And try doing it over and over, while maintaining a perfect line, pointed feet, and not seeming to be making a whole lot of effort or to breathe all that heavily?

Sadly, many of the videos of Bujones are blurry. But I offer you a few that show just a glimpse of the gifts I’m talking about. Here he is as James, the hero (or perhaps anti-hero) of one of the oldest ballets in existence, “La Sylphide.” He has the challenge here of dancing in a kilt (in this case, you may be relieved to hear, with underwear). I think this short clip is a great example of the extraordinary quality of Bujones’ ballon:

I said that dancers have to look as though they’re not exhausted. But in this next clip from the finale of “Giselle,” Bujones has to achieve the next trick of seeming both energetic and exhausted, sequentially and even simultaneously. The plot involves the eponymous heroine Giselle’s betrayal in the first act by Prince Albrecht, played here by Bujones. This is the second act, in which he goes to her grave (she has died of a broken heart at the end of Act I) and he is set upon by Wilis, spirits of women who are determined to dance him to his death. But Giselle herself has a love that transcends the grave and the betrayal, and she is set on saving him from his fate.

In this excerpt Albrecht has already been under the spell of the Wilis and is forced to dance, against his will, and is both spellbound and exhausted. At the very beginning of the segment I’ve cued up, there is a series of entrechats (the step where he jumps vertically, with beats) that is absolutely phenomenal. A sequence like that has the effect of turning one’s legs and feet into the equivalent of lead weights. (By the way, looking at videos of Barishnikov doing the same ballet, he does a different type of step that’s not quite as exhausting, although I can’t remember which is the original choreography, Bujones’ version or Barishnikov’s). Giselle appears at around 1:20; before that we just see the Wilis, commanding him to dance till he dies: