Film

The Great Arch (2025)

Stéphane Demoustier

5/5

The story behind an architectural masterpiece

The visionary and humanly flawed personality of the Danish architect Johan Otto von Spreckelsen is at the heart of this fascinating film about the Great Arch project in Paris. It was inevitable that a filmmaker would eventually choose to tackle this story. Largely based on Laurence Cossé’s excellent book from 2016, Demoustier’s film fictionalises some of the personal relationships, but largely stays true to the known facts. It’s one of those stories that makes you wonder why invent at all when real life provides such superior material.

The UK premiere of the film was screened at the Ciné Lumière, opening the annual French Film Festival, followed by a Q&A with the director and lead actor. It is a shame that the French title, L’inconnu de la grande arche (The unknown man of the Great Arch), was not preserved in English, because although the stories of the Great Arch and its creator are intimately intertwined, what draws you in is in fact the unusual personality of the architect. Enacted with thoughtful ease and charisma by the Danish actor Claes Bang, this reimagining of Spreckelsen is dignified and true to the narrative context. When the camera focuses on him walking, Bang holds the viewer’s attention, his pace and manner often offering subtle clues to the character’s state of mind. He looks nothing like Spreckelsen, but conveys the quality of a noble but misunderstood genius without delving into the possibilities of resentment.

Set during the Mitterrand years, the film starts with the president about to reveal the name of the winner of the architectural competition, which turns out to be the virtually unknown Spreckelsen. Permeated by the slightly alien yet nostalgic aura of the 80s when a president could invest in what some would now consider vanity pharaonic projects, but are in fact incredibly bold, artistically impressive and lasting public monuments, the film successfully communicates the disbelief in hindsight that such a vast construction project could have been undertaken and furthermore completed. Michel Fau’s Mitterrand convinces without trying to mimic the president and his aide Jean-Louis Subilon, played by an unusually low-key Xavier Dolan, stands for the abundant bureaucratic complications the project encounters.

After the slightly humorous start, Demoustier avoids easy stereotyping and builds on the mysterious authenticity of Spreckelsen while presenting others as largely acting in good faith. The drama is in the conflict between Spreckelsen’s admirable purity and his regrettable and total inability to compromise. Sidse Babett Knudsen as Spreckelsen’s wife gives a serious performance as support and foil to her husband.

The most spectacular scene is when in a no-cost-spared exercise, a crane holds up a mock arch in situ for the president who, standing in the middle of the Champs-Élysées, needs to approve that the Arch extends the ‘historical axis’ connecting the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe in a successful manner, without in any way obscuring it.

There is another great scene in Spreckelsen’s Stavnsholt Kirke in Farum, Denmark, when Sprechelsen and Paul Andreu, played by Swann Arlaud, are considering their possible collaboration. Spreckelsen even plays the organ inside this beautifully hand-crafted space before Andreu agrees to his terms. Allowing us to glimpse Spreckelsen’s previous work in this way and to see him briefly on his own territory helps balance the representation of his character.

The weakest moment is toward the end when Subilon and Andreu visit a Danish cemetery in the pouring rain trying to find Spreckelsen’s grave. They ramble around aimlessly in a way powerful officials and architects would not do. It is unfortunate that this scene doesn’t quite work as it should, decreasing the momentum that has been steadily built up to that point. But it highlights yet again how misunderstood Spreckelsen was in Paris.

Demoustier does a fine job in reflecting on the mystique and the realities of construction without sensationalising. There are superb recreations of the vast building sites as a background for demonstrations and conversations. Demoustier does not dwell on the obstacles but uses them to create tension between characters. Commendably he avoids turning Spreckelsen into a victim, preserving until the end a sense of wonder about the man.

Spreckelsen is still not particularly well known in France despite being a creator of one of its most impressive buildings. The unloved Défense area in Paris where the Great Arch is situated is due a reappraisal. With office space becoming a less relevant commodity in the age of remote working, perhaps this unique building will yet find its true purpose. The way this extraordinary building sets the tone and unifies the Défense area is largely taken for granted today. Vast pan-European projects may be in the past, but that should not stop us from continuing to admire them and from wishing to live again in such a generous era.