By James Slaymaker.
Pacifiction paints a portrait of French Polynesia as a land suspended between indigenous agency and external mechanisms of control and dehumanisation, an area still overcoming the trauma of its brutal colonial past and looking towards an uncertain future….”
The first shot of Albert Serra’s Pacifiction (2022) – one of the greatest cinematic openings in recent memory – potently establishes the film’s hazy, disquieting aesthetic in which intoxicating beauty and apocalyptic dread sit side-by-side. In a lusciously glacial drift, the camera pans across a long line of shipping containers piled up high on a depot on the Tahitian coast, each one clearly with the logo of a transnational corporation. Behind the containers in the foreground, the stunning natural landscape of the island is visible – a towering mountain ridge, lapping waves, a luminous persimmon skyline. The sequence is hypnotic, with Serra’s deep-focus digital cinematography capturing every hue and nuance of the late evening light, but also charged with an immense sense of menace. The organic Polynesian environment is visually overpowered by the totems of international trading, and the super-saturated sky, although visually ravishing, also eerily calls to mind what the atmosphere might look like following a nuclear explosion. Pacifiction is filled with similarly otherworldly, ominous images: a chintzy nightclub bathed in indigo light in which French sailors sway against crassly commercialised painted images of authentic island culture; an derelict clifftop hotel overlooking the shore; undulating patterns of artificial lights on the floor of a deserted bar after closing time; a jet-ski ride up the monolithic swells of a giant wave; a torrential downpour illuminated by stadium lights.
Pacifiction paints a portrait of French Polynesia as a land suspended between indigenous agency and external mechanisms of control and dehumanisation, an area still overcoming the trauma of its brutal colonial past and looking towards an uncertain future, a space struggling to express its distinct cultural identity while navigating the policies and regulations imposed on it by the French state. Pacifiction marks the first time that Serra, the rigorous formalist who established himself as one of the most brazenly original voices on the modern European arthouse circuit with revisionist period films such as Birdsong (2009), The Story of My Death (2013), The Death of Louis XIV (2016) and Liberté (2019), has set a film in the present day, and though the neon-etched palette of Pacifiction may seem, at first glance, to be a departure from the neo-classical chiaroscuro visual style of his earlier historical pieces, it soon becomes clear how effectively Serra’s career-long fascination with societal collapse, paranoia, and grand-scale abuses of power are transposed to this particular geopolitical context. It’s also, despite its contemporary setting, a film deeply immersed in the history of its central location – and specifically the myriad ways in which the trauma of the past infuses the present moment.
In the late 18th century, European explorers, including British Captain Samuel Wallis and French navigator Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, first made contact with the islands, marking the beginning of French colonisation in Polynesia. Formal annexation began in the 19th century as France gradually expanded its control over the archipelago. Missionary activities followed, resulting in much of the Polynesian population being converted to Christianity. French Polynesia was officially designated a French overseas territory in 1946, and in 1966 the nuclear testing program in the region began with atmospheric tests in the Tuamotu Archipelago at Mururoa Atoll and Fangataufa Atoll. Between 1966 and 1974, a total of 41 atmospheric tests took place, with nuclear bombs being detonated above ground and releasing dangerous radioactive fallout into the atmosphere. These tests caused devastating environmental and health issues on the islands, and raised international concerns about the spread of nuclear contamination.
France responded to this worldwide pressure to end its atmospheric testing programs by instead moving its nuclear testing underground. From 1975 to 1996, France conducted a series of underground nuclear tests, during which bombs were detonated beneath the atolls. Although these tests were conducted underground, however, they still resulted in seismic disturbances and the release of radioactive material continued to have a disastrous impact on the people of French Polynesia, causing higher rates of cancer, thyroid disorders, and other radiation-related illnesses. In 1995, French President Jacques Chirac announced the end of nuclear testing in French Polynesia, and the final test took place in January 1996. However, the legacy of France’s nuclear testing program continues to shape the political and social landscape of French Polynesia, and calls for further accountability, reparations, and assistance in tackling the long-term consequences persist. Moreover, although some steps have been taken by the French state to give French Polynesia an increased level of self-governance, it remains an overseas territory of France. This means that while French Polynesia has its own elected officials, a President, and a local assembly that manages various aspects of governance, it is still under the sovereignty of France, and it is subject to the French Constitution and laws. Certain economic sectors, such as defence, foreign affairs, and justice, remain firmly under the control of the French government, and France maintains a strong military presence in the territory, including the ownership of several naval bases.
Serra’s central characters tend to feel the weight of passing time in a particularly acute way. From the Casanova of The Story of My Death to the Louis XIV of The Death of Louis XIV, Serra has recurrently focused on privileged characters who perceive, on some level, grand, sweeping transformations occurring yet they are unable to consciously understand what these changes are or what their long-lasting ramifications will be. As such, they are beset by a sense of malaise and melancholia, incapable of grasping the shifting tides of a society that they are increasingly unable to recognise. There is a strong sense of continuity between these earlier Serra protagonists and Monsieur De Roller (Benoît Magimel), the French-appointed High Commissioner for French Polynesia. For much of its first act, Pacifiction follows the daily life of De Roller as he carries out his duties (attempting to mediate local disputes, organizing a surfing contest, welcoming French visitors to the island, overseeing the opening of a casino) and indulges in his personal vices (drinking in bars with scantily clad waiting staff, attending cockfights, waltzing through evening soirees). De Roller is an impotent, pathetic figure. De Roller sees himself as a benevolent figure capable of mediating between the French state and the inhabitants of French Polynesia, even as he facilitates the implementation of economic and military policies which are going to be fundamentally detrimental to the region. A state functionary decked out in a vulgar pastel suit and tinted shades, De Roller swaggers around Tahiti with a bloated sense of self-importance, failing to realise either the extent of the contempt with which he is regarded by the island inhabitants who view him as an unwelcome symbol of colonial power or the lack of power he truly has in the French government’s chain of command.
A hallucinatory epic that articulates the affective sensation of living under the persistent threat of apocalyptic destruction, warns of the dangers of succumbing to historical amnesia, and undercuts false cultural narratives of teleological progress.”
At first, De Roller brushes off the concerns that France is planning to resume nuclear testing on the island, secure is he in the assumption that the government wouldn’t consider such a development without consulting him. However, as De Roller spots a growing number of unidentified vessels in the surrounding water and notices the heightened presence of military officials on the island, he descends deeper and deeper into a state of uncertainty and despair. As De Roller increasingly questions his true role on Tahiti and lapses into paranoid delusions, panic overcomes the island inhabitants, and he is thoroughly incapable of handling the burgeoning civil unrest. What becomes abundantly clear, first to the viewer and then, gradually, to De Roller, is that the man has no true authority; he’s merely a powerless cog in a labyrinthine machine, subject to the whims of economic and government forces which do not care whether he lives or dies. His job was always to put a faux-friendly face on France’s continued exploitation of the land, and now, it seems, his role extends to placating the population even as they face nuclear annihilation.
Although De Roller, in his inaction, his alienation, and his growing awareness of his own futility, is in line with the aforementioned Serra protagonists, what’s distinct about Pacifiction is that Serra is no longer charting a shift from one defined historical moment to the next; there is only the sense that De Roller, the island, and, perhaps the entire world, is heading towards its own destruction, an apocalypse brought about through the insatiable greed and self-interest of elites who seem at once omnipresent and diffuse. De Roller has done their dirty work under the illusion that he has some semblance of control, but now that he has outlived his usefulness, he can easily be disposed of. It should be noted, though, that De Roller’s awareness of the maliciousness of his professional superiors doesn’t inspire in him a heroic sense of purpose. Instead, he succumbs to self-pity, only interested in saving himself from harm and regaining some of the illusory dignity he feels he has lost. Pacifiction is Serra’s most ambitious and accomplished work thus far, a hallucinatory epic that articulates the affective sensation of living under the persistent threat of apocalyptic destruction, warns of the dangers of succumbing to historical amnesia, and undercuts false cultural narratives of teleological progress.
James Slaymaker is a journalist and filmmaker. His articles have been published in Senses of Cinema, Bright Lights Film Journal, MUBI Notebook, Little White Lies, McSweeney’s, Kinoscope, Film Comment, and others. His first book Time is Luck: The Life and Cinema of Michael Mann (Telos Publishing). His films have been featured on Fandor, MUBI, and The Film Stage, as well as screening at the London DIY Film Festival, the Concrete Dream Film Festival, the InShort Film Festival and The Straight Jacket Film Festival. He is currently a doctoral student at The University of Southampton, where his research focuses on the late work of Jean-Luc Godard, post-cinema, and collective memory.