“Pacifiction” is about a wheeler dealer who discovers that the world will move on with or without him, …

… and the peculiar thing is that Serra never turned that logic back on himself and imagined that the last thing we need is a talented artist doing his best impression of other talented artists for a project with the most obvious roots and ambitions. Oh, is life under colonialism a disgrace? Well shut my mouth! Since when? He should have come up with a more damning conclusion and worked his way towards it, rather than filming everything and hoping he had said enough to justify the film’s three-hour length and plotless flow. At its best, you do want to go swimming in its images. At its worst, you beg for an artist who’s answerable to no one to trust someone to tell him when he’s run out of road.