Hello, Bookstore
A Massachusetts bookshop struggles to survive the pandemic.
Aptly enough the title of this documentary by A.B. Zax is the response given by Matthew Tannenbaum whenever he answers his telephone. Matthew is the owner of a shop in Lenox, Massachusetts, a much-loved institution known simply as The Bookstore and he has been there since 1976 arriving just three years after it first opened. This affectionate film is set inside the store virtually throughout and that is fair enough for this is Matthew’s world and Hello, Bookstore is first and foremost a portrait of this man, somebody who patently lives and breathes books.
I feel sure that there are will be some viewers who positively adore this documentary, people who are themselves devoted to the kind of bookshop in which one is encouraged to browse and where the proprietor is a true bibliophile. But I think that it can also be said with some certainty that responses to Hello, Bookstore will differ. As it happens, the credit titles describe it as "a film in chapters” but, ironically, that is not the case at all. Far from being divided into clear segments, the film offers a continuous whole which, although illustrative of life in the shop, is completely shapeless. We learn that Matthew lost his wife after only eleven years of marriage and had to bring up his two young daughters (both seen here as adults) on his own, but what is revealed of his past life and of his parents’ history is very limited with bits and pieces popping up at odd times indiscriminately, a fact that adds to the sense that this film lacks structure.
Questions about the film’s construction are further brought about by the fluctuation between colour photography and images in black-and-white. There is nothing odd about occasional archive footage not being in colour, but A.B. Zax gives us a pre-credit sequence entirely in black-and-white and, since it features scenes during the Covid crisis showing customers required to remain on the street side of the door, one assumes that this choice is intended to be atmospheric or even symbolical of the period. But, despite the film then bursting into colour, what follows includes much further footage also shot during the pandemic, the greater part of it - but by no means all of it - shown in colour. This lack of logic creates a sense of the arbitrary nature of the piece equally applicable to the short scenes that make up so much of the film and which seem to be in no particular order until about an hour in. At that point the film approaches the one and only dramatic event in the entire movie, that being the severe economic challenge due to the pandemic which threatens to lead to the closure of The Bookstore.
What holds the film together even so is Matthew himself, the fact that he is his own man and loves what he does and is a great talker. His love of words frequently encourages him to read out extracts from books, but with only a few exceptions we are not told the title or the author and that fact even more than the film’s shapelessness will surely annoy many viewers. To add a reading list in the closing credits only irritates further since, while the list presumably covers the works quoted earlier, one couldn’t align the titles with the particular extracts that one has heard even if longer time were given to take in the list of recommended books.
A few years ago, Ron Mann's documentary, Carmine Street Guitars got a limited release in the UK and it comes to mind here because its portrayal of a New York establishment dealing in the repair and the sale of those instruments covered ground not dissimilar to that in Hello Bookstore, even to the extent of pivoting around a wonderful proprietor. However, that film was so much more adroitly put together that it only serves to underline the limitations inherent in Hello, Bookstore. That said, though, Matthew's personality is very well caught here and, despite the film hardly venturing outdoors, the exchanges between him and his customers do capture very well the feeling of living in a small town community. Like, Carmine Street Guitars this film is doubtless a labour of love, but for the reasons I have noted its appeal is to some extent a specialised one.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring Matthew Tannenbaum, Shawnee Tannenbaum, Sophie Tannenbaum and customers of The Bookstore, Lenox.
Dir A.B. Zax, Pro A.B. Zax, Mark Franks, Melissa Nathan and Sydney Flint, Ph A.B. Zax, Ed Mark Franks and A.B. Zax, Music Jeffrey Lubin.
Greenwich Entertainment Release-Bulldog Film Distribution.
86 mins. USA. 2022. US Rel: 29 April 2022. UK Rel: 30 June 2023. Cert. PG.
