A clever girl and a misanthropic old Grantler. The buddy combination is as old as Johanna Spyri’s classic children’s book “Heidi”. As is well known, little Heidi manages to thaw Almöhi, who actually doesn’t want to have anything to do with humanity anymore, through affection and her fresh, pious, cheerful nature.
Carsten Henn’s novel “The Book Walker” works according to the same principle. It is only logical that “Heidi” is also briefly mentioned in one scene. The dream team that will melt everyone’s hearts in no time is Christoph Maria Herbst, who is now also drawn to emotional roles in the autumn of his comedic life, and the lively newcomer Yuna Bennett.
Herbst plays Carl Kollhoff, an old bookseller who lives in a book-filled attic like Spitzweg’s poor poet. Kollhoff prefers to get involved with books more than with people. Every day he makes his rounds on behalf of a bookstore and delivers carefully wrapped books on foot and in a satchel.
To customers who are just as strange as he is. “The books have to belong to their people,” he explains to nine-year-old Shascha, who curiously wants to accompany the strange man and first catches one basket after another. Schascha is just as much of a bookworm as Kollhoff and, as a half-orphan, has a heavy burden to carry himself.
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In his first directorial work for the cinema, cameraman Ngo The Chau pulls out all the usual stops to give the sentimental fairy tale the right melting touch. The leisurely pace of the narrative, the cozy small town with similar interiors, the nostalgic look of warm colors and the complete rejection of harsh reality make the “Book Walker” a cozy cinematic entertainment for the whole family.
Only notorious curmudgeons like the literary critic Denis Scheck noticed when the novel was being written that “Book Walker” was in the “bookstore porn” genre. A milieu that is always described as noble, helpful and well-described, which in the cinema is not only good for romantic comedies like “Email for You”, but also for science fiction classics like François Truffaut’s Ray Bradbury film adaptation “Fahrenheit 451”. . There the book people are the good guys who oppose a soulless dictatorship by reading alone.
Mister Darcy and Effi Briest
“The Book Walker” is completely free of such subversiveness. The books that Carl Kollhoff and his new girlfriend carry to Mister Darcy, Mrs. Longstocking, Hercules and Effi Briest, as Kollhoff characterizes his customers based on characters in novels, are all soul caresses. And Shascha wouldn’t be Shascha if she left it at carrying children. As unquestioned and impetuous as in Kollhoff’s life, it also bursts into that of the lonely bibliophile.
Maren Kroymann as a former elementary school teacher, Edin Hasanovic as the rich Mr. von Hohenesch and Hanna Hilsdorf as a downtrodden wife, it is clearly fun to exaggerate their characters. Both in their petrification and in their departure. Ronald Zehrfeld, as a gross motor roofer who now has to raise his child alone, seems to suffer from severe acting discomfort in this setting.
The fact that oldie Carl Kollhoff is discarded by a managing director (Nikola Kastner) who spews anglicisms and converts the old-fashioned “bookstore at the city gate” into the faceless shop “Orange Books” can be chalked up to the catchphrase of cheap criticism of capitalism.
“This is the story of a man who needed to let some fresh air into his life,” announces the narrator’s voice at the beginning of “Book Walker.” That would also have been a good idea for the feel-good film adaptation of Carsten Henn’s fictional Schmonzette.