American Factory is a Gripping Look at Workers Fighting to Reaffirm Their Humanity

In the wake of 2008 economic recession, it was the little people at the bottom of the economic totem pole that suffered the most compared to the wealthy Wall Street tycoons who actually played a part in causing this downturn in the first place. Part of this suffering came from the closure of countless manufacturing plants, leaving American workers who had previously relied on that source of income with nowhere else to go. Some hope was offered up come 2015 when Chinese manufacturing company Fuyao bought up an abandoned GM manufacturing plant in Dayton, Ohio and turned it into an American branch of Fuyao's manufacturing company. For the first time in years, manufacturing jobs were brought back to this small American town and things were looking up.

At first, American Factory, a documentary directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, seems to just be a lovely little inspirational feature about a small town getting saved and the friendships that form between the local workers and employees flown out from China to work in the factory for two years. During these early scenes, American Factory does a fine job of alternative between perspectives of the American works (including one woman forced to move back into her parents home due to her financial troubles) and the perspective of the Chinese workers. The former perspective is the one that gets the most screentime here but in a way that feels organic to the story rather than at the expense of fleshing out the humanity of everyday workers adjusting to a new country.

The most prominently chronicled of the workers hailing from China turns out to be Wong He and he provides some of the most thoughtful moments of the entire motion picture. What's especially moving about He's storyline is his recurring note of how he's expected to keep his emotions in check and adhere strongly to his work yet he also makes it clear that he's yearning to return home to his family. There's a dissonance between the expectations of how He is expected to behave and his actual internal emotions that makes for extremely poignant sequences, particularly in one scene where his narration plays over a forlorn He sitting in an empty lunchroom while chaotic actions happen around him.

An intimate character-driven exercise begins to develop conflict once the people running the Fuyao factory begin to impose poor working conditions on its workers, leading to these employees to try and start up a union. It's here that American Factory reveals its true colors as an examination of the little people trying to take on big corporation to affirm their humanity, a massively imposing challenge given that the individuals running Ruyao have made it clear that the existence of a union keeping workers safe will lead to them outright leaving Dayton, Ohio altogether. The employees captured in American Factory are forced to contemplate which is more important, job security or being able to survive on your job.

I wish we got to see more of the perspective of the Chinese assembly-line workers during this stretch of the movie, but that's the highest complain I can lob at an otherwise transfixing depiction of a David vs. Goliath workplace scenario. What's especially impressive of how American Factory films this struggle to create a union is how much of the unsavory anti-union tactics of higher-ups at the factory that they're able to catch on-film. One scene shows a manager talking openly (his face unburied and everything!) about how he'll punish employees who have pro-union sympathies. It's astonishing how callous people can be on-camera when they truly believe there's nothing wrong with the hideous behavior they're engaging in.

Yet another sequence is comprised of audio from a supposedly unbiased meeting with a clearly anti-union slant that the bosses force the employees to attend. God knows how American Factory was able to get all this footage together without navigating a billion or so lawsuits, but thankfully they did as it shows the way giant corporations work overtime to undermine the humanity of their employees in a frank manner that leaves nothing up to interpretation. Zebra's are black-and-white, water is wet and the people running this Fuyao factory were despicable (as made clear by one of them uttering "Let's make America great again!" in one of the last scenes of the moving) in how they treated their employees. The warm humanity of the first-third of American Factory's runtime really makes the potent exploration of these mighty anti-union sentiments all the more powerful to watch, you really understand and are emotionally invested in the human beings running the titular location.