What Writer Issue

Aryan Couple, The

Source: The List (Issue 560)
Date: 2 October 2006 (updated 31 July 2007)
Written by: Paul Dale

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The Aryan Couple

HISTORICAL DRAMA

(12A) 119min

John Daly is a big man in the filmmaking world. His exec producer credits include Salvador, River’s Edge, Platoon, The Last Emperor and Loach’s Hidden Agenda. So how he came to direct a film this bad is something of a mystery. Based on the not very true story of two Aryan servants (Kenny Doughty and Caroline Carver) of German/Jewish industrialist Joseph Krauzenberg (Martin Landau) who, in order to guarantee safe passage to his family, hands his business over to Himmler (Danny Webb) during WWII, The Aryan Couple is, without question, the most amateurish feature to be given distribution in a while.

Badly framed, badly shot, badly recorded and edited by what seems to be a rhinoceros with a hoof injury, this really is poor. At its best it plays like a really shoddy cheezeball 80s mini series. The cast try their best given the circumstances but Daly and Kendrew Lascelles’ terribly heavy handed and derivative script is so full of stilted exposition and unnecessary longeurs that they are stranded in a fairly airless and awkward historical drama. If it’s WWII dramas you want, you would do much better renting Oliver Hirschbegel’s Downfall or Marc Rothermund’s excellent Sophie Scholl: The Last Days.

Cineworld Renfrew Street Glasgow & Cineworld, Edinburgh from Fri 13 Oct.

More: Historical Drama, The Aryan Couple, Reviews (Film)