The Unknown of the Grande Arche on Canal Plus: the fascinating behind the scenes of an extraordinary project (review)

After Borgo, Stéphane Demoustier examines another form of prison, more mental, that of an architect engaged in a monumental work. Implacable.

Presented last year at the Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section, The Unknown of the Grande Arche is broadcast for the first time this Tuesday evening on Canal Plus (and visible in streaming on MyCanal). Première recommends this film by Stéphane Demoustier.

A large cube pierced by emptiness in which can be read the very Napoleonic Parisian perspective which passes by the Arc de Triomphe and looks at the Obelisk of the Place de la Concorde. This large cube located in the La Défense business district is at the same time the work of its creator, the “unknown” Johan Otto von Spreckelsen, a 53-year-old Dane who has so far only built his ” house and four churches », and its instigator, President-King François Mitterrand then at the dawn of his first seven-year term. Stéphane Demoustier (Borgo…) plays on this constant balance of forces between beings and things. That’s the funny part of it. All you have to do is see Michel Fau as a ridiculous precious Mitterrand moving forward like a puppet who nevertheless pulls the strings. However, future cohabitation will bring pragmatism into the land of its geometric dreams.

At the foot of the titanic construction site, there is this von Spreckelsen (the brilliant Claes Bang), an architect who sees the windmills of a French political-economic reality rising before him that is difficult to resolve with his artistic demands. Monuments necessarily have things to tell us about the world and the men who saw them born. Like his Brutalist which saw Brady Corbet put himself in tune with his anguished hero to emerge from the earth and materialize a gigantic trauma, Stéphane Demoustier, certainly more restrained but just as Sisyphus, focuses his camera on this “unknown” anxious to tame the void. From this vertigo comes tragedy. The stubbornness of the creator sculpts the walls of solitude.

By Stéphane Demoustier. With Claes Bang, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Xavier Dolan… Duration: 1h46.