Höllentour

hoellentour, a documentary by Oscar-winning film maker pepe danquart on the 2003 tour de France, is documentary filming at its best.

the rave reviews the docu has gotten in each and every German newspaper are more than deserved. for tour de France junkies it will give new insights and spark memories of the memorable 2003 tour, for those who couldn't care less about road racing, the film will definitely still be entertaining and might spark interest in the sport.

the film has everything a good docu should have: great imagery and colouring, gentle observation of its subjects, fantastic music and timing. - and all that real life drama! that last time trial in the rain, when ullrich fell, could not have been "scripted" any better... life makes for the best stories, after all. it tells its story without any annoying voice-over by a commentator, all commentary you get is from the cyclists themselves.

erik zabel and rolf aldag are the center of the film. zabel, one of the most successful cyclists in the world

comes across as a natural, hard working, extremely funny, loyal guy. no attitude whatsoever. - considering that the 2003 tour must have been a humbling experience for him, crashing badly early on, no green jersey, losing sprints to petacci in the first half of the tour (before petacci quit at the first molehill), yet he still shows his true self in this docu. it's entertaining to observe his relationship with rolf aldag: they seem like a long married couple with appropriate loving bickering and well defined roles (who gets which bed, who has control over the remote). zabels happiness for aldag after winning the mountain jersey is totally genuine and loving. - one of the best moments of the docu, i'd say. in contrast to that winokurov seems hard to grasp, floating around in the team doing his thing (like, almost win the tour), without really any attachments to anyone. maybe it's just the language barrier, maybe the editing.

overall, it is amazing that pepe daquart got such intimate access to the entire telekom team. - he definitely made the most out of it.

he shows more though, than just the workings inside a team. danqart portrays the strangeness of the tour in its entirety (think "caravane"!), the glorious scenery, the fans camping out in the alps and following the tour around, the historians who deem it the greatest sport event ever, the journalists, the little villages transformed for a day for the occasion.

the racing scenes feel like music videos (in the best possible sense) with their electro-jazz soundtrack by till brönner and flowing camera movements and close ups of feet, legs, gear changes. the post race scenes are a stark contrast to that, totally quiet, zabel ponmdering the race or barely staying awake as legendary telekom physio "eule" massages his legs.

i'll definitely watch the movie again, buy it when it gets out. its a much better 2003 tdf souvenir than any video that just shows the race as you got to see it on the telly anyway. seriously great stuff.

'Höllentour' for me is regarded as the best cycling movie of the last five years, which gives an authentic insight into the real-life of professional cyclists during the 'Tour de France', the most outstanding bike-race in the world. The protagonists Aldag & Zabel do not really act, instead they just do what pros are used to do during extreme race situations with its ups and downs- they fall down and stand up again, which has a very motivating effect(perhaps a successful further development of method acting). From the very beginning of the movie both convince by their natural and sympathetic manner. For the audience it is definitely worth to get an intimate insight into the work of a professional cyclist. Danquart succeeds in transporting aesthetic pictures and combines them with a superb soundtrack. Some scenes, e.g. the prologue in Paris, are so motivating just by the power of their pictures. Even non-cyclists really enjoyed the film, since it does not demonstrate special secrets for insiders, but convinces with a fascinating composition of narrative means,e.g. editing, music, flashbacks and 'actors', who play their own role authentically.

'Hell On Wheels' is a great documentary that takes us along with the German team as they compete for the Tour De France title in 2003. Although the names are unfamiliar, the race is most certainly not. The film has a great mixture of what preparations the team has to go through, as well as a brief history, as well as a general map of what the cyclists has to go through. Me? I don't follow cycling all that seriously, so I found this immensely interesting. The German members are of course, trying to beat the number one guy, the terribly overexposed Lance Armstrong, who, while he is indeed in the film, takes a back seat (or saddle seat, if you will) to the Germans. And although the conclusion is perfectly obvious, it was really riveting to share with them their highs and lows on competing such a grueling race (and then, for example, immediately having to sign autographs). Well worth watching.

I am not a cycling fan, and I would not have gone to see this film if I had not won the tickets.

Now, having seen it, I would still rather have won tickets for any another one because this documentary is not nearly as enthralling for people like me as it would for somebody who is a real cycling fan who watches the Tour de France on television every year.

On the other hand, it was not as boring as I expected. Especially the first of the two hours had bizarre and even funny scenes, a weird display of reality that makes some documentaries so interesting, and some of the images of the French landscape and this colourful mass of people cycling through it are really beautiful and sensational.

The whole film has something sensationalistic to it, especially created by the powerful and rather heavy score. Well, I guess this made it at least more entertaining for non-fans like me.

Höllentour is a film about the 2003 edition of the Tour de France, following the trials and tribulations (of which there are many) of Erik Zabel and Rolf Aldag, two riders of the German "Team Telekom". But the cameras also show you what goes on before and after the events of the stages, with a few historical bits of film thrown in. It's a fascinating document about one of the world's largest sporting events, and it's even quite interesting if you're not that keen on Road Race Cycling. At two hours total length however, the film is just a few minutes too long. One or two scenes could have been cut without loosing anything. As this is the only complaint I have I'll give it 9/10, as it is definitely a film I will buy once it comes out on DVD!