The Store (1983)

[StevePulaski]

The Store (1983)
Directed by: Frederick Wiseman

Rating: ★★★

Frederick Wiseman's documentary The Store opens on an early-morning, closed-door meeting at the headquarters of Neiman-Marcus in Dallas, one of two settings where the 117 minute film will take place - the other one of their department stores. The man, who we can presume is in a position of high authority at the company because, in typical Wiseman fashion, there are no title cards, date markers, or directorial interference. He drones on about how Neiman-Marcus is, first and foremost, a place where "sales are made." "We're not a place for people to come in to get out of the rain," he says and he firmly cements that the stores are not places for people to come in and socialize. He claims the stores may serve that purpose in a secondary sense, but, again, once and for all, "it's about sales, sales, sales."

With that, Wiseman appears to construct a film around the simultaneously general but direct term. Everything shown in the Dallas-based headquarters or its neighboring department store contributes to the ever-increasing finances of Neiman-Marcus, a luxury department store popular in the United States. Shot and released in 1983, Wiseman looks at the way in which the store's most popular selections of jewelry, perfumes, bras, and shoes are priced and displayed in the store and pulls back to show how they are discussed and brainstormed in the private boardrooms of the company's offices.

Yet again, it's astonishing how much access Wiseman is granted in shooting. He's permitted to sit in on meetings involving upper management where ordinarily confidential things such as tactical marketing approaches and employee tutorials are discussed. The dichotomous footage that shows relations between veteran employees and optimistic rookies as well as a bird-chested male stripper donning a chicken mascot to celebrate an older employee's birthday party manage to be woven together so elegantly and show just how much Wiseman is allowed to see and film.

Also in typical Wiseman fashion is the way he refuses from being vain by way of interjecting himself or any kind of formalist interviews in the midst of the film. It's just him and his camera, positioned accordingly with the full intention of being edited into a final project with its central direction and focus at the forefront of his mind. Wiseman doesn't make his intentions as visible as other documentary filmmakers, but he does allude to themes based on what he shows. In The Store, he paints a picture on a large canvas that shows the capitalist interworkings of a department store made for the incredibly wealthy and upper middle-class. By peddling, in my opinion, gaudy jewelry, unjustifiably expensive brassieres, and a nauseating planogram of sensory annihilation upon a customer waltzing into one of their hundreds of locations across the United States, Wiseman shows the glaring materialistic side that often comes with a very respected and lavish social standing. Casual conversations about costly watches and shoes serve as the film's main dialog if not confined to showing the previously mentioned boardroom meetings.

At one point, a man contemplates purchasing either a $32,000 coat made from red-hair farm sable or a $45,000 coat made from white-hair sable. He chooses over both as if he's choosing between K-Mart shoes and Wal-Mart loafers in terms of the price. While shopping today, I wrote off a $25 dry-erase calendar at Staples as too expensive. I drove to a nearby Wal-Mart to purchase one for $10.87 and felt validated.

One could argue The Store would fit comfortably in the center of two other films by the director, the one being Welfare (1976 - unseen by me), which takes a look at the welfare system over the course of four hours, and the other being Public Housing (1997), which looks at life in a now demolished Chicago housing project. In between examinations of the impoverished and unprivileged in America lies a film that examines the complexity of American sales and the materialism embedded in the more fortunate demographic. The Store marks another look at a richly layered institution that Wiseman examines with sporadic hints of poignancy while continuing to show how his style of filming translates and captivates almost effortlessly.

Directed by: Frederick Wiseman.