Hel­lo, Bookstore

A sev­en­tysome­thing man stands at his bookshop’s store­front, telling cus­tomers they can­not come in. With­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of brows­ing, many of them sad­ly walk away. The man, after wav­ing them off with a smile, stands qui­et­ly in an emp­ty shop filled with books wait­ing to be read. This is the first scene we see in A.B. Zax’s debut fea­ture doc­u­men­tary Hel­lo, Book­store. We all know that inde­pen­dent shops were one of the hard­est hit indus­tries dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, but the film pro­vides a heart­felt case study of how these busi­ness­es strug­gled to stay afloat. 

The 86-minute doc­u­men­tary depicts the small-town book­shop (apt­ly named The Book­store) based in Lenox, Mass­a­chu­setts run by Matt Tan­nen­baum. As the pan­dem­ic rears its ugly head, the friend­ly atmos­phere of the shop is hit with mid-pan­dem­ic mon­ey trou­bles. The Book­store faces clo­sure, but the com­mu­ni­ty takes the lead to save it.

Zax sets up cam­eras around the book­shop to cap­ture the every­day expe­ri­ence in the quaint business.The lit­tle details of this book­shop are straight out of a Wes Ander­son film, includ­ing sec­ond-hand books, tat­tered pho­tos span­ning back decades, and (less Ander­son) a roll of toi­let paper cov­ered with Don­ald Trump’s face. Tan­nen­baum dis­plays his favourite nov­els to the cam­era like a kid at a show-and-tell, delight­ed to share his rec­om­men­da­tions. In the footage from pre-pan­dem­ic times, the shop is con­stant­ly filled with cus­tomers flick­ing through new releas­es and per­son­al rec­om­men­da­tions. Jef­frey Lubin’s clas­si­cal score plays almost con­stant­ly, adding to its sense of com­fort­able warmth. 

The cam­era nev­er leaves the shop, jump­ing between sea­sons and includ­ing con­ver­sa­tions with­out any intro­duc­tion. While it some­times feels frus­trat­ing, this is the nature of the shop as cus­tomers come and go in the bus­tle of a work­ing day. The doc­u­men­tary feels like a win­dow into a dif­fer­ent time, and Zax does a bril­liant job of por­tray­ing this cozy atmos­phere with an unob­tru­sive film­ing style. 

While The Book­store fea­tures heav­i­ly, the doc­u­men­tary is real­ly all about Tan­nen­baum. The man is a walk­ing moti­va­tion­al quote, radi­at­ing a kind­ness that is imme­di­ate­ly charm­ing. Tannenbaum’s own sto­ry is scat­tered through­out as he tells cus­tomers how he fell in love with lit­er­a­ture dur­ing his time in the Navy, and how he raised his young daugh­ters after his wife died sud­den­ly. Despite his often trag­ic anec­dotes, Tan­nen­baum is hum­ming with vibran­cy. His pres­ence is a con­stant through the film, and by the end you have fall­en in love with him. It feels like a trib­ute to his life’s work, with even the title pay­ing homage to how he answers the phone.

Tan­nen­baum has been there for gen­er­a­tions, rec­om­mend­ing books for chil­dren who will return with their own fam­i­lies one day. His pas­sion for pass­ing on a love not only of read­ing, but of com­mu­ni­ty to the next gen­er­a­tion is rep­re­sent­ed in every cus­tomer he wel­comes. The wor­ry­ing decline of inde­pen­dent book­shops is tick­ing in the back­ground, but Tannenbaum’s pas­sion for his busi­ness lends the film a sense of hope. As he strug­gles to pay rent for the book­shop amid a dizzy­ing rise in online shop­ping, the com­mu­ni­ty show­er him with support. 

We watch Tan­nen­baum craft a touch­ing para­graph for his GoFundMe page where he reach­es out for help from his loy­al locals. With­in a few days, he has reached a stag­ger­ing $60,000 of dona­tions, pro­vid­ing him a help­ing hand to keep the busi­ness going. Hel­lo, Book­store art­ful­ly dances between being tear-jerk­ing and charm­ing. You would be hard pressed to find a film that rep­re­sents the beau­ty of inde­pen­dent book­shops quite like this one.