THEO UNKNOWN OF THE GREAT ARCH
Type: heroic-artistic biography
Direction: Stéphane Demoustier. With Claes Bang, Sidse Babett Knuden, Xavier Dolan, Swann Arlaud, Michel Fau, Micha Lescot
The “Great Arch” of which the title speaks is the Grande Arche which rises in the Parisian neighborhood of La Défense. The unknown, however, is the Danish architect Johann Otto von Spreckelsenthe surprise winner of the competition for La Défense, who was not exactly unknown (many Danish churches are his) but who no one expected him to win.
And the film tells what happened between 1982 (the year the winner was announced) and 1987when the architect died before seeing his work completed, which was inaugurated by President Mitterrand for the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution.
Michel Fau and Claes Bang as Mitterrand and the architect in the film “The Stranger of the Grand Arch”.
But it’s not just the titanic undertaking to build the “cube” (as the designer called it) which computer graphics reconstructs in all its magnificent gigantism, but rather of the struggle between the demands of art and the obligations of compromises: von Spreckelsen is the champion of the artist who pursues a dream of perfection, indifferent to the problems of costs, politics and construction times. An individualist, he goes so far as to question even marriage in order not to compromise on the objective he has set for himself, but this is how one enters history. And he did it.
For those who want to discover what lies behind the Arco della Défense.
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