Why Watch Pacifiction?
Benoît Magimel won back-to-back César Awards for Best Actor in 2022 and 2023—a first in the ceremony’s 48-year history. The second trophy came for playing a French bureaucrat who spends 165 minutes essentially doing nothing while paradise crumbles around him. Critics at Cahiers du Cinéma named it the best film of 2022. Half the audience walked out calling it a masterpiece. The other half compared watching it to observing grass grow.
This split isn’t a bug in Albert Serra’s Pacifiction. It’s the entire architecture.
Serra shot 540 hours of footage in Tahiti using three cameras simultaneously, fed his lead actor dialogue through an earpiece in real-time, and created what IndieWire called “one of the most beautiful and rigorously introspective movies of this or any year.” The film premiered in Competition at Cannes 2022, collected awards for Magimel’s performance and Artur Tort’s cinematography, and sparked arguments that continue today. Because Pacifiction isn’t a film you watch casually on a Tuesday night. It’s a film that asks you to surrender—to nearly three hours of magenta-tinted paranoia, conspiratorial haze, and apocalyptic dread disguised as a tropical vacation.
The question isn’t whether you should watch Pacifiction. It’s whether you’re the type of person who can.
What Pacifiction Actually Is (And Isn’t)
The plot synopsis sounds deceptively straightforward: French High Commissioner De Roller investigates rumors of a submarine near Tahiti, suggesting France might resume nuclear testing. But calling Pacifiction a thriller is like calling the ocean wet—technically accurate, catastrophically incomplete.
Pacifiction functions as:
A post-colonial mood piece where De Roller (Magimel) glides through Tahitian society like a well-dressed ghost. He attends nightclub performances, conducts meetings in beachside restaurants, flirts with a transgender local named Shannah, and monitors the arrival of a French admiral whose cryptic statements hint at something ominous. The narrative, such as it exists, unfolds through observation rather than action.
Serra describes his filmmaking approach as capturing “pictures without ideology,” though Pacifiction overflows with political implications. The film positions De Roller as simultaneously powerful and utterly impotent—a colonial bureaucrat representing a state that no longer commands real authority. He investigates nuclear rumors with binoculars while the actual power structures operate beyond his comprehension or control.
What critics compared it to: John le Carré drained of urgency, Apocalypse Now without the apocalypse, The Parallax View reimagined as ambient music, Apichatpong Weerasethakul meets Alan J. Pakula, Below the Volcano relocated to French Polynesia.
What it absolutely is not: A conventional thriller with reveals, action sequences, or narrative resolution. Anyone expecting the submarine to surface dramatically or the conspiracy to explode into violence will leave confused or furious. Pacifiction refuses catharsis. It offers only the suffocating experience of watching power perform its own irrelevance.
The Serra Method: How Improvisation Creates Hypnosis
Albert Serra’s directing technique borders on performance art. For Pacifiction’s 24-day shoot, he established one non-negotiable rule: actors could not stop a scene, speak to him, or acknowledge the cameras. Some scenes ran 45 minutes without direction. Three cameras captured every moment simultaneously. Magimel wore an earpiece through which Serra fed him dialogue that the actor had to deliver naturally, immediately, while maintaining his character.
This improvised yet controlled chaos produces something rare in contemporary cinema—genuine unpredictability within structured themes. Magimel described the experience as liberating: “I didn’t know it was possible to be so free on set.” The result feels less like watching scripted performances than observing behavior as it emerges.
The film’s rhythm mirrors its subject matter. Long takes drift like De Roller through society. Conversations meander without arriving at conclusions. The pacing is lethargic by design—Serra wants viewers to experience the same ambient dread, the same lack of agency, the same sense of being a small actor in larger, incomprehensible systems that characterize modern political life.
Cinematographer Artur Tort, who won the César for his work, deployed a visual strategy inspired by Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate—saturated colors combined with atmospheric diffusion. The result: Tahiti appears simultaneously gorgeous and disturbing, every sunset bleeding into apocalyptic orange, every nightclub scene pulsing with uncanny neon. Tort explained his approach: “It has to be beautiful but at the same time somehow disturbing.”
This aesthetic dissonance—paradise that feels poisoned—pervades every frame. The famous surfing sequence, where cameras bob among massive Pacific swells, demonstrates both nature’s overwhelming power and humanity’s insignificance. It’s thrilling and terrifying in equal measure, a microcosm of the film’s larger concerns.
Benoît Magimel’s Performance: The Art of Embodied Hollowness
Magimel’s De Roller represents what Variety called “a calculating man with flawless manners” who navigates between official receptions and shady nightclubs with equal facility. His cream linen suit never wrinkles. His blue-tinted sunglasses never come off. His smile never reaches his eyes.
What makes the performance extraordinary is how Magimel embodies colonial bureaucracy’s essential emptiness. De Roller constantly performs authority—greeting locals with patronizing warmth, dropping hints about his connections, smoothly deflecting difficult questions—while the film gradually reveals he possesses no real power whatsoever. He’s a symbol without substance, a representative of a state that represents nothing.
The genius lies in the details: how De Roller’s charm shifts depending on his audience, how his body language changes from confident in boardrooms to slightly uncertain on boats, how his monologues (including one scene where he talks endlessly in a car while his companion fights sleep) reveal a man desperately trying to convince himself of his own importance.
This marks Magimel’s third César win, following Best Supporting Actor for Standing Tall (2015) and Best Actor for Peaceful (2021). The consecutive wins for Peaceful and Pacifiction—playing a dying man confronting his mortality, then a living man whose relevance is already dead—showcase his range and Serra’s ability to extract career-best work from established stars (as he previously did with Jean-Pierre Léaud and Helmut Berger).
The Political Subtext: Colonialism as Radioactive Decay
Beneath Pacifiction’s hypnotic surface churns a savage critique of neocolonialism. The film takes place in French Polynesia, where France conducted 193 nuclear tests between 1966 and 1996 on the atolls of Moruroa and Fangataufa. These tests caused measurable increases in thyroid cancer rates among Polynesian populations—a fact that gives the submarine rumors weight beyond mere paranoia.
Serra never lectures. He simply shows: De Roller praising the “violent energy” of traditional dance performances he doesn’t understand. French marines shipping young Polynesian escorts out to sea “in pretty rough shape.” Local leaders giving De Roller polite smiles while clearly viewing him as irrelevant at best, malevolent at worst. The film depicts colonialism not as dramatic oppression but as ambient violence—a system that operates through patronage, sexual exploitation, cultural fetishization, and environmental destruction while wearing the face of bureaucratic friendliness.
The film’s portmanteau title—pacifiction (Pacific + pacification + fiction)—encapsulates this critique. It suggests that the very concept of “peace” in colonized territories is a fiction maintained through systems of control. The rumored nuclear testing represents the return of overt violence, but the violence was always present, simply disguised.
One reviewer noted that Pacifiction provides insight into understanding contemporary politicians—”If you want to understand Johnson, Truss, Trump, this is the film to be patient with and watch.” The comparison isn’t accidental. De Roller embodies how modern political figures perform authority while serving larger, often invisible, systems of power. His ineffectiveness isn’t personal failure; it’s structural by design.
Why Pacifiction Polarizes: The Slow Cinema Question
The film holds an 87% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes but provokes extreme reactions from audiences. Some call it “absolutely brilliant…the best cinematic experience of the fantasy state of leaders.” Others describe it as “almost 3 hours of nothing…pure boredom.” Both responses are valid because they describe fundamentally different viewing expectations.
Pacifiction polarizes because:
1. Its pacing defies conventional rhythm. Serra shoots for duration and mood rather than narrative momentum. Scenes continue long past the point where traditional editing would cut away. Conversations circle without landing. The film trusts that atmosphere and observation can sustain interest without plot.
2. It refuses explanation. Key events happen offscreen or are only implied. The admiral’s plans remain cryptic. The submarine’s existence stays unconfirmed. Characters speak elliptically, leaving much unsaid. This ambiguity is intentional—Serra wants viewers to share De Roller’s confusion and lack of information.
3. It demands active participation. Watching Pacifiction requires mental engagement different from conventional filmmaking. You must track relationships through glances and body language, infer political dynamics from small interactions, and construct meaning from fragments rather than having it delivered through exposition.
4. The payoff isn’t narrative. There’s no third-act revelation, no confrontation, no resolution. The film ends as it began—adrift, uncertain, with darkness gathering. This lack of catharsis frustrates viewers expecting traditional thriller mechanics.
Film critic Peter Bradshaw (The Guardian) wrote he was “captivated by the film and its stealthy evocation of pure evil.” Another critic at Roger Ebert compared it to being “lulled into hell as this charming fucker kept talking and talking.” Both capture Pacifiction’s essential quality: it’s seductive and punishing, beautiful and draining, hypnotic and exhausting.
The film belongs to what’s called slow cinema—a movement including directors like Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Tsai Ming-liang, and Béla Tarr. These filmmakers prioritize contemplation over action, ambiguity over clarity, immersion over entertainment. They make films designed to be experienced rather than consumed.
The Cinematographic Achievement: César-Winning Visuals
Artur Tort’s cinematography for Pacifiction earned numerous awards including the César, Lumières Prize, and Gaudí Award. His achievement lies in creating images that are simultaneously documentary-like in their observational quality and highly stylized in their aesthetic.
Key visual strategies:
The color palette: Tort pushed colors to near-saturation while maintaining atmospheric depth. Tahiti appears drenched in magentas, oranges, and deep blues—simultaneously lush and unnatural. The nightclub scenes glow with neon that feels toxic rather than festive. Sunsets bleed into apocalyptic reds. This heightened reality mirrors the film’s themes of paradise corrupted.
Distance and observation: Many scenes are shot from a remove, positioning viewers as surveillants rather than participants. Medium and long shots predominate, creating what one critic called “a sense of surveillance and paranoia” while also “underscoring the lack of a center by keeping us at a distance.”
Natural elements as characters: The Pacific itself becomes a character. The surfing sequence—where cameras ride the swells alongside boats and surfers—demonstrates both spectacular beauty and terrifying power. These waves dwarf humans, rendering them insignificant. It’s arguably the film’s most traditionally “cinematic” moment, pure visual poetry that requires no dialogue or plot.
Lighting naturalism: Unlike many films about tropical locations, Pacifiction avoids romanticized lighting. Tort used available light whenever possible, letting the humid atmosphere diffuse and soften without losing detail. The result feels authentic rather than tourist-brochure glossy.
Tort described his inspiration from Vilmos Zsigmond’s work on Heaven’s Gate—”combines saturated colours with diffusion. A combination you rarely see.” For Pacifiction, achieving “pushed colours and keeping at the same time the humid atmosphere of the island was important.”
The cinematography communicates what dialogue cannot: the film looks like a dream that’s slowly curdling into nightmare, like paradise that’s always been poisoned beneath its surface beauty.
Who Should Actually Watch Pacifiction?
Be honest with yourself about your tolerance for ambiguity, slow pacing, and non-traditional narrative. This matters more than general taste in foreign films or art cinema.
Watch Pacifiction if you:
Appreciate mood and atmosphere over plot. If you found Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival or Blade Runner 2049 too slow, Pacifiction will test your patience. But if you loved the contemplative pacing of those films, Serra pushes the concept further.
Want to see colonialism explored through implication rather than didacticism. The film never lectures about its political themes. It shows them through behavior, spaces, and relationships. If you prefer your critiques embedded rather than stated, this delivers.
Find bureaucratic impotence fascinating. Much of the film involves watching someone with nominal authority discover their actual powerlessness. If that sounds compelling rather than tedious, you’re the target audience.
Value cinematography as storytelling. Tort’s visual work carries as much meaning as the dialogue. If you’re someone who notices framing, color, and composition, Pacifiction offers abundant rewards.
Can submit to a film’s rhythm. Multiple critics used the word “hypnotic” for good reason. The film induces a trancelike state in receptive viewers. This requires surrendering control and letting the film wash over you.
Have seen and enjoyed: Films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Memoria), Lucrecia Martel (Zama), Chantal Akerman (Almayer’s Folly), or Claire Denis’s more contemplative work (Beau Travail, The Intruder). These share Pacifiction’s interest in colonialism, alienation, and unconventional pacing.
Skip Pacifiction if you:
Need narrative momentum. If you found The Irishman too slow or couldn’t finish The Power of the Dog, Pacifiction will feel interminable. It’s significantly slower than either.
Require resolution. The film doesn’t answer its central questions. If that causes frustration rather than intrigue, you’ll hate the experience.
Watch films primarily for entertainment. Pacifiction is many things—mesmerizing, challenging, beautiful, infuriating—but “entertaining” in the conventional sense isn’t one of them.
Have limited time. At 2 hours 45 minutes, it’s not a casual viewing commitment. And the film demands your full attention—watching while distracted defeats its purpose.
One Rotten Tomatoes user summed up the split perfectly: “If you thought it was going to be an action movie and dislike slow burn movies, you won’t like it…though why be mad it’s not French fries when it’s a lake of purée?”
The Critical Consensus: What Makes It Important
Beyond the awards and accolades, Pacifiction matters because it represents something increasingly rare: a film that demands cinema. It cannot be reduced to television-scale viewing. Its wide shots, long takes, and immersive atmosphere require the theatrical experience—ideally on the largest screen possible, as multiple critics emphasized.
The consensus recognizes several achievements:
As political commentary: “Regardless of what people may say about Serra’s arrogance and self-delusion, this film brilliantly captures a zeitgeist, in the way that TV series like The White Lotus or films like Triangle of Sadness only suggest. There is a sense of doom, a malaise so starkly real that the film simply doesn’t need much more to captivate the viewer.” (Metacritic compilation)
As sensory experience: “Pacifiction is not a vicarious experience of luxury; it is an experience of life. Set to its own tidal rhythm, it is one of the most beautiful and rigorously introspective movies of this or any year, a film that makes you deeply ponder the fate of humanity itself.” (Christian Blauvelt, IndieWire)
As Serra’s evolution: “Pacifiction is by far Serra’s most serious and sombre film to date, an epic of neutered power and human expendability—a death-knell for humanity rendered as a tropical daydream.” (Little White Lies)
The film holds a 75 rating on Metacritic based on 18 critics, indicating “generally favorable reviews.” Its Cannes premiere sparked immediate debate, with some calling it Serra’s most accessible work while others found it his most challenging.
Cahiers du Cinéma’s decision to name it 2022’s best film above everything else that year—including Tár, The Fabelmans, Triangle of Sadness, and Everything Everywhere All at Once—represents a clear statement about what the magazine values: cinema as art form rather than entertainment product, films that challenge rather than comfort, work that demands attention rather than passively delivering pleasure.
How to Watch Pacifiction: A Practical Guide
If you’ve decided to attempt Pacifiction, approach it strategically:
1. Watch in a theater if possible. The film was designed for large-format projection. Serra’s compositions utilize the width of the frame, and Tort’s color work benefits from proper theatrical presentation. The immersive quality suffers significantly on smaller screens.
2. Clear your schedule. Don’t watch after a long workday when you’re tired. Don’t watch with interruptions. The film requires mental presence. Plan for the nearly three-hour runtime plus time to process afterward.
3. Don’t expect a thriller. Reset your expectations based on the plot description. Think of it as a visual essay about power and colonialism that happens to involve a conspiracy plot, not vice versa.
4. Let yourself get lost. The confusion you feel—about who characters are, what’s happening, what matters—mirrors De Roller’s experience. Embrace the disorientation rather than fighting it.
5. Pay attention to visual details. Notice how characters are framed in relation to each other. Observe body language during conversations. Watch for recurring visual motifs (sunsets, water, surveillance).
6. Accept that you might not “like” it. Some of the most powerful cinema makes us uncomfortable, bored, or frustrated. These reactions can be valuable if we examine why we’re having them.
7. Watch it with someone who shares your patience level. Don’t drag a friend who loves Marvel movies. Don’t go alone if you need someone to discuss it with afterward.
Currently, Pacifiction is available for rental or purchase on Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video. It occasionally screens at art house theaters and repertory cinemas. The home viewing experience is acceptable but loses the immersive quality of theatrical presentation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Pacifiction really as slow as everyone says?
Yes. It’s slower than most contemporary slow cinema. Serra prioritizes duration, observation, and mood over narrative momentum. Many scenes continue well past conventional editing points. This isn’t a flaw—it’s the film’s entire aesthetic. But it makes the 165-minute runtime feel significantly longer.
Do I need to know about French Polynesian history?
No, though context enriches the experience. The film provides enough information to understand its post-colonial dynamics. Knowing about France’s nuclear testing in the region adds layers of meaning but isn’t required for comprehension.
What’s the “plot” actually about?
De Roller, French High Commissioner in Tahiti, investigates rumors of a submarine that might indicate resumed nuclear testing. But the film cares less about whether the submarine exists than about De Roller’s process of investigation and his gradually revealed impotence. The conspiracy provides structure, not purpose.
Why did Magimel win César for this performance?
His work embodies a specific type of character rarely seen on screen: the bureaucrat who performs authority while possessing none. Magimel makes every small shift in De Roller’s behavior meaningful—how his charm modulates depending on audience, how his confidence masks uncertainty. It’s an internal performance in an external role.
Is there any action or violence?
No conventional action. Some verbal tension. References to violence (escorts returned “in rough shape,” implications of nuclear testing consequences). But nothing visually dramatic happens. The violence is structural and atmospheric rather than depicted.
What’s with all the nightclub scenes?
The nightclub (Morton’s) represents colonial space where locals perform for foreign entertainment. It’s where power dynamics become most visible—white tourists watching Polynesian dancers, De Roller networking while indigenous people serve. These scenes demonstrate colonialism’s performance of “cultural appreciation” while maintaining hierarchy.
Should I watch Serra’s other films first?
Not necessary. Pacifiction is arguably his most accessible work despite being slow. If you want to sample his style first, The Death of Louis XIV (2016, 115 minutes) offers similar pacing in a more contained story. Liberté (2019) is even more challenging.
What does the ending mean?
The film ends without resolution—De Roller’s investigation remains inconclusive, the threats stay vague, nothing is resolved. This lack of closure is deliberate. Serra wants viewers to experience the same uncertainty and lack of control that characterizes modern political life.
The Final Verdict: A Film That Selects Its Audience
Pacifiction represents pure cinema—a film that exists because of what film can do that no other medium can. It uses duration, visual composition, sound design, and performance to create an experience rather than tell a story. Whether that experience is profound or tedious depends entirely on what you bring to it.
The film passed through major festivals (Cannes, Toronto, New York, BFI London), collected prestigious awards (Césars, Louis Delluc Prize, Cahiers du Cinéma top film), and earned critical acclaim from outlets that value challenging cinema. It also frustrated general audiences who expected the thriller the plot description promised. Both responses validate the film’s polarizing nature.
Serra has created something that will never find mass appeal and doesn’t want to. Pacifiction selects its audience through self-selection. If the description of a 165-minute slow cinema political mood piece interests you, you’re probably temperamentally suited to the experience. If it sounds like torture, trust your instincts.
For those who submit to its rhythm, Pacifiction offers rewards: Magimel’s revelatory performance, Tort’s stunning cinematography, Serra’s unflinching examination of colonial dynamics, and the rare experience of cinema that prioritizes feeling over understanding, mood over plot, contemplation over entertainment.
The question isn’t whether Pacifiction is good—it demonstrably is for its intended audience. The question is whether you’re part of that audience. Only you can answer.
Key Takeaways:
- Pacifiction is Albert Serra’s slow-burn political thriller about a French bureaucrat investigating nuclear testing rumors in Tahiti
- Benoît Magimel’s César-winning performance captures colonial bureaucracy’s performative hollowness
- The film’s 165-minute runtime and glacial pacing divide audiences—critics praise its hypnotic atmosphere, some viewers find it boring
- Artur Tort’s cinematography transforms Tahiti into a saturated, uncanny paradise where beauty masks decay
- The film functions as post-colonial critique through mood and observation rather than explicit politics
- Best experienced in theaters with patience for slow cinema that prioritizes atmosphere over narrative resolution
Recommended Viewing Companions:
- Apocalypse Now (1979) – Conrad adaptation with colonial critique
- Zama (2017) – Lucrecia Martel’s slow-burn colonial nightmare
- Beau Travail (1999) – Claire Denis’s visual meditation on French Foreign Legion
- Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) – Weerasethakul’s contemplative masterpiece
- The Parallax View (1974) – Pakula’s paranoid thriller that Pacifiction echoes