Diamanta Lupu:,,Forbidden minors, a book like a documentary & cinemamovie – Leaders infilm” by Paul Polidor

Forbidden to minors, a book like a documentary & cinema movie: “Leaders infilm: optional course of visual journalism and political psychosociology”

by Paul Polidor

There is nothing unusual to adapt a movie from a novel. As Jean Cocteau said, the movie is “a writing in pictures”. Famous movies were first, famous novels, and the screenplay just put them more on value and popularized them. On the other hand, the reverse process, when filmography becomes the ground for a book, when the visual of the movie preserves its spectacular valences and still remains attractive, even it is transposed in writing is a special one. This is “Leaders in movie: optional course of visual journalism and political psychosociology” by Paul Polidor. A book of reference, which Dan Matei Agathon claimed to be “a masterpiece of the genre … a book in which Paul Polidor compiled a complex treatise … describing the rise and results, many times odious, of those who led nations and who traced history in the dramatic 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century”.

Uncensored, spectacular, performative, forbidden to minors, Paul Polidor’s course proved to be a challenge for me. On the one hand, my curiosity was piqued because of its content, on the other hand, I have to say that I have doubts that something new could be said on the subject of the leader as a dictator. So I started browsing through the book, read a little here, a little there, and in the end the book kept my attention. So I went back to the home page and I have read the book from cover to cover with an increasing interest.

Using a collection of movies, Paul Polidor developed in “Leaders in movie: optional course of visual journalism and political psychosociology”, a portrait gallery of some dictators like Nicolae Ceaușescu, Fidel Castro, Stalin, Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Slobodan Miloșevici, Saddam Hussein, Troțki, Trujillo.

Creative seasoned, coagulated, with an alert rhythm, the book signed by Paul Polidor offers an unprecedented and challenging approach of the backstage life and plans of some leaders who have decided the fate of the peoples, which they ruled according to theirown personal interest, whims, sexual preferences, or the sign they were born in.

From Trotsky, the former leader who sends to Freda Kahlo short letters of love into the books he has lend to her, to Stalin the “grave-digger of the Soviet soldiers” or to J. F. Kennedy who loses Cuba in favor of the Russians, the course signed by Paul Polidor is enriched with spicy details, extravagant scenes and unexpected revelations.

Whether is about Jackie Kennedy or the women of mafia – Marilyn Monroe, Ellen Rometsch or Judith Campbell, the strong impact of the book on the reader is also increased by the enigmatic element of female presence in the book. From Leon Trotsky to Che Guevara, from Gheorghiu-Dej to Bashar al-Assad, Paul Polidor’s book bears us in a world of conspiracy, in which grotesque, cynic and illness are predominant.

It is said that life beats the movie. “Leaders in movie: optional course of visual journalism and political psychosociology” is a clear demonstration that not only life beats, but also the book beats the movie. And who he reads this book (and sees the DVD which is forbidden to minors, the screenplay is written by Paul Polidor, and the analyzes of the “shocking scenes” are also directed by Paul Polidor), once he reached the last page, he would realize that he had an experience similar to seeing an exciting movie!

Corina Diamanta Lupu

Bucharest

10 November 2018