Bibliophiles will adore this little film.
I’d like to believe that it also will appeal to a broader audience.
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| How much nicer it was, back in the day: Bookstore owner Matthew Tannenbaum enjoys chatting with his customers, just as much as making a sale. |
(Who, just in passing, is the title character in Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant.”)
It quickly becomes clear that this establishment isn’t merely a bookstore; it’s a community gathering place, where folks come, yes, to buy books, but also to chat with Tannenbaum — mildly disheveled, invariably dressed casually — and delight in the stream-of-consciousness anecdotes, memories and convivial conversation that mark A True Raconteur.
When he insists that “There’s a book for everyone,” we know he’s serious … and that he’ll scour the shelves to find the perfect title for a given customer.
The bookstore also is home to the “legendary Shade Gallery” and the “Get Lit” wine bar. (“Our motto,” Tannenbaum explains, “is that you can’t drink all day, unless you start in the morning.”)
A custom-designed alphabet block sits on the counter, the letters on its six sides spelling W-R-I-T-E-R. (A writer’s block, of course.)
Zax knew The Bookstore well, having spent many happy hours, weeks and years browsing its stacks, smelling that rarified and distinctive “book scent,” and — by his own words — “watching Matt hold court” with customers. Zax undoubtedly conceived this project as a means of celebrating the ongoing, four-decades-plus success of an independent bookstore: not an easy thing, in this era of online shopping.
He began filming in the autumn and winter of 2019 … and then Covid hit, at which point Zax was forced to pivot. Suddenly a film intended to honor Tannenbaum and his bookstore became an as-it-happens study of grim survival in the pandemic era. And as this 86-minute film proceeds, we begin to wonder if the shop will endure.
The narrative cuts back and forth between late 2019 and the spring and summer of 2020, although it opens during the latter. Tannenbaum — wearing a cranberry-colored mask — refuses to allow anybody into the store, and conducts transactions by speaking loudly through the closed door. Patrons then are asked to step back, while he places the purchased item(s) on a stool in front of the store.
As the film proceeds, and we get to know Tannenbaum better — during the 2019 sequences — we understand how deeply this necessity must have wounded him. He’s a creature of personal connection, who comes alive with the arrival of a recognized friendly face, or an inquisitive newcomer. His eyes positively sparkle.
It’s also clear that he has become a local institution: “I became the guy that other people see when they grow up.”
Zax’s camera caresses the shop’s interior like a lover: “bathing in the sunlight on the spines of books, and lingering over a whispered tale.” Some of the pandemic sequences shift to black-and-white, to reflect the grinding frustration and despair of time standing still.
“I had only eight customers in a whole day,” Tannenbaum laments at one point, mid-pandemic.
During earlier, happier, public times, he spontaneously erupts in a quote from a favorite book, or reads aloud a passage from a book snatched from one shelf. It’s important to note that there’s no trace of pomposity about such behavior; Tannenbaum is the antithesis of a stuffy academic. He simply loves books, authors and the very atmosphere of reading, and delights in sharing this with others.
He has a warm and sincere smile.
He’s frequently visited by his adult daughter, Shawnee, who brings along her 4-month-old daughter. Shawnee’s latter-day counter-culture vibe seems right at home in the shop, which she cheerfully expects to take over when her father decides that he has had enough. (One cannot imagine this milestone. He’d only go out feet first.)
But that’s assuming the store survives long enough for such a transition.
“For all these years, I’ve been in business, and I’ve managed to creep by,” he confessed in Thomas Farragher’s 2020 Boston Globe profile. “And suddenly — very suddenly, because I’m not a businessman — I had a big payable due, and I realized: I don’t have any money coming in.”
As for what happens next … well, that would be telling.
“Every town has a store worth saving,” Tannenbaum observes, and he’s absolutely correct. The subtlest power of Zax’s film is that it makes us pause, mentally tabulate the shops in our own community, wonder which we’d lament the most, were it to vanish overnight … and further wonder if we should DO something about that.
Transactions aren’t simply the speed and convenience of Internet commerce. They’re also about human contact.
That’s where the magic occurs.
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