4.5/5
Review by John P. Harvey.
In 1982, President François Mitterand (played by Michel Fau) initiated a competition for the design of a monument celebrating the 1989 bicentenary of the French Revolution. The monument was to complete a line of great monuments sited in La Défense, Paris’s enormous business district.
The little-known Danish architect Otto von Spreckelsen (Claes Bang), along with his fellow countryman engineer, won the competition with their concept of a modernised Arc de Triomphe, designed to serve as a monument to humanity and humanitarian ideals rather than to military victory.
Focusing on the involvement of winning architect rather than his engineer partner, The Great Arch takes us from the moment at which Otto and his wife, Liv (Sidse Babett Knudson), learn of his win directly from Mitterrand’s coordinator of major architectural projects, whom the film names Jean-Louis Subilon (Xavier Dolan). Seeking a project manager and construction firm that would maintain the purity of his design for a hollow glass-faced marble 110-metre cube incorporating office space, Otto settles, for his project manager, on French architect Paul Andreu (Swann Arlaud) and lets him work out construction details.
Meanwhile, aside from checking in with Andreu and Subilon, Otto, with Liv’s assistance, busies himself in such refinements as finding the perfect marble to use for the monument’s facade and keeps Mitterrand well-informed as to aesthetic considerations whose value Mitterrand shares with him.
The many obstacles to realisation of his vision that Otto faces are at first largely technical; but within three years, under a more stringent government, Otto faces the major obstacles: politics.
Filmed with a close eye to the values that Otto champions and to the interpersonal conflicts that arise over values and principles versus pragmatics and conveniences, The Great Arch manages to convey with little fanfare the grandeur of Otto’s vision as well as the bureaucratic reticence embodied in Subilon and the chicanery that major construction projects attract as a matter of course. Otto’s “Cube”, now known as the Arche de la Fraternité, reminds those who see it of the nobility of that vision.
The Great Arch’s cinematography suits very well the scenes it shoots and remains steadily unnoticeable throughout. Bang, Dolan, and Arlaud represent with finesse the three directions in which the project is being pulled by Otto, Subilon, and Andreu, with Knudson grounding Liv’s character as a steadying influence over and source of additional stratagems for Otto.
Though lacking life-and-death stakes, The Great Arch offers us insights into the core values underlying Otto’s Cube and the principles for which he fights, and it’s well worth a look.
Screening at Palace cinemas.