‘The Great Arch’ Review: Claes Bang Captivates as an Unknown Danish Architect Battling French Bureaucrats to Build His Monumental Work

Between Megalopolis and The Brutalist, obsessive architects were at the center of two of the most ambitious arthouse movies released last year. A more modest addition to the group, but fueled by some of the same ego-tripping, technical hurdles, bureaucratic infighting and money squabbles, Stéphane Demoustier’s The Great Arch follows the tragic true story of Johan Otto von Spreckelsen, an idealistic Danish builder whose design for a massive new monument next to Paris wound up destroying his life.

Filled with more French-bashing than most movies coming out of Gaul, the film offers a play-by-play account of what von Spreckelsen went through after he was chosen to erect a brand-new arch in the futuristic La Défense district west of the city. He had high ambitions that his “cube,” as he constantly referred to it, would stand alongside the Arc de Triomphe and Eiffel Tower as an enduring part of the Paris landscape. Little did he know he would be fighting a long and painful battle of attrition between various factions of the French government, with only President François Mitterand standing by his side.

Adapted by Demoustier from Laurence Cossé’s 2016 novel, The Great Arch marks the underrated director’s fifth movie in just over a decade. None of his previous work has been released in the U.S., which is unfortunate because Demoustier (brother of the talented actress Anaïs) is one of those rare French filmmakers who can blend suspense with perceptive writing and characterization, resulting in artsy thrillers that dig deep. His last feature, Borgo, starring the superb Hafsia Herzi as a shady prison guard in Corsica, is definitely worth a look.

Demoustier’s latest film is less suspenseful than the others, although there’s still some underlying tension guiding the sad trajectory of von Spreckelsen (Claes Bang), who goes from being an unknown professor of architecture to designer of the biggest public monument to hit the Paris area in many years. In 1982, his audacious white cube was selected to be the new Great Arch sitting on the west end of an axis encompassing the Arc de Triomphe, the Champs-Elysées and the Louvre. It’s a bombshell that shocks the French establishment, especially after Spreckelsen reveals himself to be totally fanatical about his creation and completely unpragmatic when it comes to building it.

He’s probably the last person that the project’s shrewd managing official, Subilon (a memorable Xavier Dolan), would have picked for the job, but von Sprecklesen quickly gets the backing of Mitterand himself (Michel Fau), who falls under the Dane’s charms during their many discussions about art and culture. A more experienced French architect, Paul Andreu (Anatomy of a Fall‘s Swann Arlaud), who designed Charles de Gaulle airport when he was only 29 years old, joins the team to handle all the daunting logistical obstacles, putting up with von Sprecklesen’s intransigence about his masterwork.

The Great Arch delves into the nitty-gritty details of erecting a public structure in a country where government red tape sticks to everything, and creativity is often waylaid by political and budgetary realities. The film doesn’t shy away from showing how the sausage was made, whether it’s all the meetings von Spreckelsen sits though as he sees his original design transformed beyond recognition (for him — it looks pretty much the same to us), or else the gradual evolution of the construction site, convincingly rendered through a combination of VFX and production design (by Catherine Cosme).

Brady Corbet’s movie of course comes to mind here, especially when von Spreckelsen pays a visit to the same breathtaking Tuscan quarry where Adrien Brody’s character met his horrible fate in The Brutalist. But the Danish architect faces a different kind of misfortune, learning that the marble he chose is both impractical and too expensive for a project already over budget. Another blow is struck when Mitterand’s party loses the midterm elections, bringing a right-wing government to power that has other plans for the famous cube.

Von Spreckelsen suffers these drawbacks like a sculptor whose chef d’oeuvre gets slowly but surely chipped away by the powers-that-be. Stubborn and righteous, as well as religious — one standout scene shows him virtuously playing the organ of a church he designed in Denmark — he’s unprepared to face a French system ruled by warring bureaucrats all conniving for the president’s good graces.

Bang is perfect for this kind of role, playing an imposing figure who can be both aloof and egocentric, and whose grand stature diminishes as the film progresses. While we spend lots of time with the architect on the job, we don’t get to see much of von Spreckelsen’s personal life beyond the perfectly fusional relationship he seems to have with his wife and business partner, Liv (Sidse Babett Knudsen). But even that bond winds up getting shattered as the project struggles to move forward as planned.

Demoustier’s depiction of the long — it took seven years from start to finish — and sordid affair behind The Great Arch’s construction is a tale of lost illusions, with von Spreckelsen as a misguided genius who won the architectural lottery and wound up paying a hefty price for it. There are some clever bits of humor thoughout th emovie, especially involving all the shenanigans of the French, but the Dane’s story ends on a decidedly dark note.  

What the film fails to show is how von Spreckelsen’s creation still stands tall today, surrounded by skaters, breakdancers and hordes of teenagers hanging out beneath its colossal white walls — or more like light gray walls (this was another sticking point for the architect). It may not be the perfect cube he envisioned, but it marks the city of Paris as much as all the other famous buildings.