American Factory

I didn't think I'd see a better documentary than For Sama this year, and having viewed Netflix's American Factory last night, the Oscar winner in the documentary category, I stand by that view.

However, this is a fine piece of work.

It tells the story of a Chinese windscreen-manufacturer reseeding the site of a massive General Motors factory in Dayton Ohio some three years after its closure.

The main premise of the film is that this is a meeting of two cultures, both business and anthropological, and how the rise in Chinese commercial enterprise, even deep in rust-belt, Republican USA, is a success that won't go away.

But the Chinese drive a hard bargain: much lower wages, poorer health and safety ideology, an intolerance of unions and a hard work ethic (in China overtime is compulsory, not optional).

The filmmakers - Stephen Bognar and Julia Rheichert - are seasoned pros and have an interesting technique that makes this such an agreeable watch. It's not controversial, there's little humour and there are no pyrotechnics. It's just a laconic stroll through the lives of the people on both sides of this cultural ravine, gradually exposing what it's like for each of them.

They take no sides, they critique no-one, but clearly there is stuff in here that could enrage a very large percentage of its viewers, no matter their cultural persuasion.

That's what makes it work. That and a good soundtrack and a pleasing use of cinematography.

It's not doc of the year, for me, but it IS an intelligent piece of documentary film-making that is as far from the Michael Moore one-sided tidal-wave of opinion and argument as one could get, and, for that, it is to be admired.

I am a high school history teacher in the USA. I tried showing this movie to my classes, in between lessons on industrialization and the future of automation. This helped reveal the real problems we have, in my opinion. That most of my students were uninterested, and even did not care about these future issues. All they wanted to do was play games on their phones. I told them they would be quizzed on the material to try and get them to pay attention, but they did not care. Even when writing a quick summary of the movie, most just copied and pasted their responses, one of them even used one of these comments as their source data. They watched the movie with the strong belief that they won't end up like that. That somehow, they will be immune to these future issues.

For students who do not care about their education or their future, the best teacher in the world won't help. Apathy will destroy us far quicker than anything else.

This film is an extraordinary achievement. With footage going back over the years, the directors have pieced together the saga of the establishment of a Chinese-run industrial operation in Dayton on the site of a much-lamented closed GM plant, illustrating, with total objectivity, the contradictions that ensue from the imposition of one national worldview upon another in a dynamic that it never a clash of equals. The impatience and contempt of the Chinese investors toward their U.S. workforce and the consequent cultural conflicts are highlighted to devastating effect, illustrated by what American viewers will find to be an uncomfortable dissection of their own culture, in all its fatuous self-indulgence, by amazing footage of lectures on the subject by Chinese cross-cultural consultants as they lecture Chinese workers and supervisors sent to Dayton to show Americans in how things should be done.

At the Q&A at the premiere at IFC Center, co-director Julia Reichert was at pains to stress that the film was never meant to be polemical, that this was an effort to immerse and learn. While some of the silllier aspects of both cultures, (but especially the regimented and self-congratulatory aspects of the Chinese). come through with particular acuity, you can't help buy muse on how Americans have acted with equal tin-earedness and cultural arrogance around the world, over many more decades than the Chinese have been at this game.

At the same time, America's neediness of manufacturing jobs, even if they don't pay a living wage, and the ways that so many of what we would normally consider our core values go out the window to accommodate anyone who will invest in them, come through particularly clearly. This all comes together in a fight over the establishment of a union that would protect workers' rights and uphold our eroding safety and environmental standards that is the vivid core of the movie.

A final note: This film has an extraordinarily compelling musical score by someone names Chad Cannon that propels and highlights the narrative and is amazingly effective on its own terms. Although the idiom is different, Cannon's score does for this film much of what Philip Glass's have done over the years for the films of Errol Morris, and that is high praise indeed.

Simply put, I'm blown away by this film. I'm a progressive, sure, but have grown disillusioned with Obama LONG ago, and I must say that I was reluctant at first to even give it a shot based on the fact that it was produced by the Obamas. After a recommendation from a friend, I decided to bite the bullet. The result is that I'm kind of shattered. I have so many more factual questions, but learned so much, and was exposed to so many aspects of different cultures... (Should it matter, I'm a city-dwelling Canadian, for whom US policy is arguably as important as my own country's policies)... I'm also left with actual philosophical questions. Was any of it good? Was it bad? which parts? Chinese culture in their factories scared the crap out of me, but what does that mean? What does it mean about me, as well? It took me 4 hours to watch this 1h50m documentary because I kept stopping to write down thoughts and ask random questions to close friends. Not that it 'should' matter for a film that aims to inform, but the filming and DEFINITELY the soundtrack made the whole experience joyful in general. There's a lot to be said for an informative documentary that can keep people's attention, and this just became one of my favourites. I can recommend it without fear that people will just move on after 10 minutes. And I never felt that the documentary aspect was sacrificed. Highly, highly recommend it.

I never thought a documentary on an American manufacturing plant would be so interesting. I'm a Canadian and I still consider this a must-watch. Extremely interesting insight into the world of manufacturing in small-town USA as well as the cultural differences between the USA and China. The whole trip to the China factory seems surreal. Unfortunately this film's ratings might get turfed by certain political interests that would rather have this stuff swept under the rug.