Delayed Reaction: American Factory

Premise: A documentary about a Chinese factory that opens a location in Dayton, OH.

There's a lot to unpack about this movie. I can see why a filmmaker wanted to follow this story. It's East meets West. It's Capitalist vs. Union. New hope vs. same old disappointments. And the filmmakers opted for a mostly detached style. They don't take time to explain a lot of things with graphics and don't take clear sides.

By the end of the movie, I'm not really any closer to having answers than when I started. It starts with the sadness of the Chrysler factory shutting down. Thousands are left without jobs. The Fuyao glass company from China comes into town to create thousands of jobs in the community. These jobs don't pay nearly as well as the Chrysler jobs did though. The high costs are largely why the Chrysler factory shut down though, so pick your poison. The Fuyao supervisors are frustrated by the American workers. Then we see the working conditions in one of the Chinese factories. They work longer day, more days, harder, and with more pride in their work. That's not necessarily a good thing though. I mean, it's good for the company, but bad for the people. The American workers want to unionize. Fuyao believes that a union will make it too expensive to justify keeping that location open. This movie does a spectacular job explaining the push and pull of workers and employers. The movie clearly has more sympathy for the workers, but it gives the Fuyao executives a fair shake. My opinion has long been that I don't understand how any company can function with more than 100 people in it. This movie captures that idea pretty well. The number of moving pieces is quite staggering.

I was surprised how starkly it addressed the culture clash. They cut to a lot of scenes of the Chinese employees and leadership bluntly calling the American workers lazy. It also foregrounds that with a lot of context. By their definition, yeah, they are lazy. They value their time more and don't associate their jobs with their identity. From my Western perspective, I wouldn't trade that for the Chinese worker experience. I am curious about one thing though. How bad was the American anxiety about the Chinese workers really? The movie paints it more as a standard employee/employer unease. You know, the employer is asking for too much; the employee isn't getting as much done as they should. I wonder about the racial or national resentment though. Surely that was brewing in corners, right? The movie hints at it, but never puts the focus on it. To be fair, I assume that was a calculated decision. As soon as that gets focus, it can easily take over the entire movie. And, yes, I realize my "complaint" is basically "Where are the racists?". I need to rethink my priorities.

My overall opinion of this movie is that it's a layered but dull story. There's a lot to unpack and examine about it, but none of it really captivated me.

Oh, and apparently the Obama produced this. I didn't remember that until afterwards. This is an encouraging start to that Netflix deal they have.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend