The workers at the Fuyao auto glass factory in Dayton, Ohio, may still only make $14 an hour, but they voted against joining a union, and elections have consequences. Things work out differently in America for different people. After the economy collapsed in 2008, for instance, President Obama did nothing for workers and homeowners, bailing out the banks and Wall Street instead. Now, post-presidency, he and Michelle have signed a multi-million-dollar deal with Netflix to produce content, which they can feel good about because the first documentary they released, American Factory, studies the plight of the workers Obama didn’t help. And it won an Oscar for its filmmakers, Julia Reichert and Steve Bognar, the crowning glory of their long career in filmmaking that stretches back to movies about feminism, socialism, and labor unrest in the 1970s and 1980s.

[...] We are supposed to feel pity for Cao, a man who is getting millions in tax subsidies from the state of Ohio. Then American Factory wrenches us again, like in Modern Times, with a supertitle at the end that informs us that by 2030, 375 million people around the world will have lost their jobs to automation, unions or not. Why this ideological muddle? Because this is cinema verité in the service of power, not people, made to win awards. A success story in the film, about an unemployed forklift operator named Jill who has to live in her sister’s basement until she gets a job at Fuyao and moves into a tiny apartment by herself, turns sour when she’s fired for bringing up safety violations. [...]

Parts of The Traitor take place in the United States. It’s always great to see European films with American-set scenes that weren’t shot here. Most of them were filmed in Germany, from what I could glean in the credits. Tommaso and his family go to a supermarket, shop in a mall, and eat in what is maybe supposed to be an Olive Garden. The supermarket stocks huge two-gallon containers of milk on the shelves in the regular, non-refrigerated aisles next to canned food; the New Hampshire mall looks more like The Grove in LA than anything in New England; and the Olive Garden features a grotty, beardless Santa wandering the dining room with a guitar, singing in Italian. (That last, of course, would be an improvement.) [...]