When the world feels all a bit dark and gloomy, there’s nothing like a shot of community spirit and kindness to give one a lift. And that’s what’s at the heart of the beautiful, meditative film Hello, Bookstore.
Director Adam Zax is a regular customer of The Bookstore in Lenox, Massachusetts, run by sometimes gruff but genuinely loveable and always interesting Matt Tannenbaum. Charmed by Tannenbaum, who has held court in the shop for over forty years, Zax picked up a camera and started filming in the autumn of 2019, obviously unaware of what lay ahead just a few months later. The resulting film is a simple but very effective fly on the wall documentary that charts life in the store over the years of the pandemic.
There’s some gentle humour, some lovely moments where Tannenbaum recites passages from some of his favourite books, and a little bit of social commentary. A woman comes in admitting that she, up until that moment, has done most of her book shopping on Amazon, but now wants to support her local store. I winced with a pang of guilt at that one.
There’s a lot of repetition on screen, though it’s never boring. The camera is often static. There’s little in the way of drama – even at the hight of the pandemic when the store’s weekly takings plummet and its future looks uncertain, things are quickly resolved with a fundraising campaign that gets huge support from the store’s loyal customers.
At the heart of this film is a love story about books and about bookshops. It wouldn’t work without Tannenbaum, with his little philosophies and stories, and the way his passion for books and for talking about books overrides everything else, including actually serving the customers who want to buy something from him.
This is a gentle hug of a film in difficult times.
Hello, Bookstore is in cinemas and available on demand now.
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