‘The Great Arch’ Review: Art, Ego and the Cost of Compromise

God will notice,” says Danish architect Johan Otto von Spreckelsen when he’s told that the dimensions of the pillars supporting his monumental project—now known as the Grande Arche in La Défense, on the outskirts of Paris—have been altered. The change is underground, invisible to the public, his French counterpart Paul Andreu reassures him. But that’s beside the point. His vision has precise, immutable proportions. Whether people notice or not is secondary. Someone else will be watching—and judging.

Johann is virtually unknown in the world of architecture when, in the early 1980s, he unexpectedly wins the competition organized by François Mitterrand’s government to build a monument in La Défense—one aligned with the historic axis that includes the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre. So obscure is he that, in one of The Great Arch’s more playfully absurd opening scenes, French officials struggle to locate him, eventually tracking him down to a small Danish town and shouting his name across a river while he fishes with his wife.

Played by Claes Bang (The Square), von Spreckelsen is a peculiar, faintly eccentric figure. Still incredulous about his own selection—he admits at a press conference that his entire body of work amounts to “four churches and my house”—he relocates to Paris with his wife Liv (Sidse Babett Knudsen, Borgen) to oversee the project. There, he’s thrust into a world entirely foreign to him: bureaucracy, politics, clashing egos, and above all, people who lack what he believes to be his defining trait—purity of vision.

His strongest ally is Mitterrand himself (Michel Fau), portrayed here as an equally idiosyncratic figure with a genuine interest in art, someone who understands and supports the architect’s pursuit. Those around them, however, are far more pragmatic. They believe in what’s possible rather than what’s ideal—starting with Subilon (filmmaker Xavier Dolan), the anxious bureaucrat overseeing the project, and Andreu (Swann Arlaud, Anatomy of a Fall), a respected architect responsible for Charles de Gaulle Airport, with whom Johann repeatedly clashes.

Adapted from Laurence Cossé’s 2016 novel, The Great Arch gradually deepens these tensions, which intensify due to shifting political circumstances and von Spreckelsen’s own mix of obsession and paranoia. Convinced he must fight to preserve every aspect of his design, he ends up straining nearly all of his relationships. In that sense, the film is refreshingly honest: there are no clear heroes or villains here, only individuals with conflicting perspectives and personal stakes.

The film’s one notable flaw—minor, but still present—is its inability to fully articulate the internal logic that drives its protagonist. Introduced at a late stage in his life, with little background beyond hints of a religious upbringing, von Spreckelsen remains something of an enigma. His obsessions can feel arbitrary, his mysticism underdeveloped. Bang’s performance leans into that ambiguity, keeping the character suspended in a gray area that oscillates between empathy, discomfort, and occasional rejection.

What works best in a film that echoes many of the themes of The Brutalist—albeit on a smaller scale and with a lighter touch—is its meticulous depiction of bureaucratic machinery and its capacity to overwhelm any creative spirit. Many of the objections raised against Johann are perfectly reasonable: some of his chosen materials are unsafe, others simply not permitted. But the accumulation of compromises ultimately distorts his vision to the point where it becomes unrecognizable to him. His tragedy lies precisely in that philosophical defeat.

Ultimately, what Demoustier puts into perspective is the tension between the urgent and the enduring—between short-term political interests and works meant to be contemplated for generations. One key scene, tied to a shift in government and the arrival of new decision-makers, lays bare this clash between those calculating immediate gains and those striving for permanence and greatness. Caught in the middle of that cultural battle, everyone loses.