Ryan McNeil
My parents still live in the same house I grew up in, so I often find myself back in “the old neighbourhood”. During one recent trip, I noticed that a sporting goods shop had closed. This was the shop where I got my first baseball bat, half a dozen hockey sticks, and more hats and jerseys than I care to count. But in an ever growing world of chain brand identification, such mom and pop operations are having a tough time keeping up. Such is the story of SMALL WONDERS.
Filmed over a span of ten years by Tally Abecassis, SMALL WONDERS makes us pay attention to the sorts of business we might not notice anymore. It tells the tale of true working class – a watchmaker, a photographer, and a hardware store owner. Their businesses don’t issue flyers. They don’t have light-up signs that have been carefully designed by a marketing firm. And if you think you’ll find a computer anywhere near their operation, forget it. In a way, they are relics of a bygone time…doing what they can to hold their places in communities that are ready to move on without them.
For director Abecassis, this is a very personal story. Her father ran a small kitchen renovation business for many years until one day a Reno Depot opened across the street. Her father wasn’t terribly worried about a little competition, until he looked at Reno Depot’s pricing – which was in many cases lower than his suppliers. It doesn’t take a marketing genius to figure out that such aggressive selling means trouble.
It’s a story of a dying breed – people who take pride in their work. Take Norman the portrait photographer for instance. The bulk of his business these days comes from taking passport photos. Yet he isn’t satisfied for you to simply sit and look at the birdie. He’ll adjust your posture just-so, and even fix a loose strand of hair or two, ultimately resulting in a passport photo worthy of Glamour Shots. “He treats models like the Dead Sea Scrolls” jokes Abecassis. Try getting that level of service at Wal Mart.
When I wondered aloud if Norman had thought about going digital, Abecassis pointed out that he’s satisfied with his Polaroid camera.
“It’s a fast camera” he’d say “The picture is ready in six minutes. How much faster do you want it?”. Argue with that.
Most intriguingly, all of the people we meet in SMALL WONDERS have a slight bit of disappointment tangible in their conversations. They are all proud people; especially as immigrants who have become successful professionals. Really, they have every right to be proud, given that their businesses have supported them for so long and fed their families. Disappointment takes over however, when these entrepreneurs consider that they weren’t able to pass the business down to children. In the end, even a sizable run of successful years in the black isn’t a comfort when a businessman is forced to close their doors.
These small wonders will continue to disappear thanks to a lack of relève tradespeople (I hear you scratching your head: relève is a french word meaning fresh/new/young talent). There aren’t a whole lot of eighteen-year-olds out there who consider their future and believe it’s their calling to be a watchmaker. Even if they did, it’s possible that we’ve become such a disposable culture that we wouldn’t hire them to fix an item anyway. Far too often these days, rather than get a pin replaced, or a gear lubed, we discard the old model and buy ourselves the latest and greatest.
The film is entertaining and moving. The three business-people are both unique and familiar, which makes their stories all the more touching. Hopefully, it will stick with its audiences, and they will think about what they’re losing the next time they wander aisles of a chain store aimlessly looking for someone to help them…and getting ambivalent shrugs at every turn.
SMALL WONDERS plays tomorrow – 9:30pm at Cumberland 2, and again on Sunday May 2nd – 5:00pm at Innis Town Hall.