Representing Pasts – Visioning Futures

Abstract

Starting with the very first scene, ´Pacifiction´ (2022), the latest film by Albert Serra, starts to talk to the spectator in an extremely ambiguous manner. The image, where at first glance all components are easy to identify, is basically impossible to classify in terms of motion and stasis: the frieze composition of barge and mountain silhouette seems to shift without giving up its immobility, making a viewer doubt whether the dynamic element in this case is the gaze of the audience or not. The sensation it provokes, both on a conceptual and visual level, is close to the idea of a perfect loop: we never know exactly where we are, and whether we are watching or are being watched. However, other notions that Serra presents during the film, this time through the dialogue, are also loop-like: a perpetual transition between night and twilight that almost never reaches the day state, stagnation and paranoid thoughts of the protagonist. This paper, referring also to some previous movies of the Catalan director, such as ´Liberté´ (2019), ´The death of Louis XIV´ (2017), and ´Story of my death´ (2013), aims to analyze Serra’s way of constructing film space: denying a narrative or any lineal development in order to create a visual atmosphere, very close to video art and the conceptual context, which can be defined as logocentric. In other words, technically belonging to the art of cinema Serra’s work, and ´Pasifiction´ in particular, blends and hybridizes genres and occupies a crossing point between visual arts, video art and essay.