BlinkDash

In the first moments of the film we go from Gustave Eiffel (a magnetic Romain Duris) sketching the tower and envisioning a future ceremony celebrating its opening to three years earlier. In a misguided attempt to add some suspense to the story, the movie continues to hop back and forth in time, with scenes of a fictional thwarted love story between Eiffel and the daughter of a wealthy family named Adrienne (the enticingly sloe-eyed Emma Mackey). As attractive as the couple is, those scenes do not have the dramatic impact they are intended to. Instead, they are a distraction from the more interesting story of the many obstacles the tower's construction had to overcome. A note just before the credits trying to tie the Tower to Adrienne more directly is overkill in large part because, see above, the love story is made up.

Though he was not the sole designer of the Tower, Eiffel and the true story of its construction are plenty interesting enough to fill a movie, especially one as sumptuously designed as this one, with fine work from cinematographer Matias Boucard. The scenes of designing and building the Tower are genuinely powerful, and even if we know it will be built, it is worthwhile to be reminded what made it consequential before it was the site of innumerable Instagram posts. Eiffel, already well established for his bridges, was even granted honorary American citizenship for his work on France’s gift to the United States, the Statue of Liberty. The sculptor was Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, but it was Eiffel and the staff of his engineering company who created the interior structure that kept her standing and kept her torch held high. He was initially not interested in building a tower that was originally intended as a temporary structure for the entrance to the 1889 world’s fair. “I want to build a Metro, not a monument,” he says. And there were many other people who were not interested in his building it. The story deserves better than a character yelling “It’s madness!” at Eiffel. 

Of course he finally decides to do it, with a vision of an edifice taller than the Washington Monument, “France’s revenge on history.” He insists it must be open to everyone, regardless of class or wealth. He is eloquent and inspiring when appearing before financiers: “I am merely a man with an idea grander than myself. I ask only that you let me breathe life into it.” And again, when he speaks to the exhausted and underpaid workers, with his version of a St. Crispin’s Day speech, telling them that it is their tower, not just his. The scenes of the construction itself are very well staged, and because we have seen Eiffel explain the ingenious watertight metal caissons and injected compressed air he used to secure the tower, we are glad to see how they work.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmq52mnrK4v46eoJ%2BelaF6rrvVopxmqpWrtqbDjGtna2o%3D