Frederick Wiseman's new film may just change the way you look at small-town America.

For more than half a century, documentary-maker Frederick Wiseman has observed American life from a discreet distance, creating visual and aural essays that fall into a felicitous middle ground between reportage and sheer poetry. “Monrovia, Indiana” stands as an exceptionally straightforward, four-square example of Wiseman’s strategy. Filmed in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, the film takes viewers to the kind of rural Midwestern town that tipped that race: small (pop. 1,443), largely white, deeply religious and unsure what the future holds in an economic context of technological and cultural change.Rest assured, “Monrovia, Indiana,” never invokes partisan politics. As usual, Wiseman simply trains his camera on what he deems important, creating a closely observed portrait of a community by way of still images and scenes captured on a static, dispassionate camera. The film’s opening scene, of rolling cropland, handsome farmhouses, gentle-eyed cows and empty roads, could easily be accompanied by a soaring score by Aaron Copland. Wiseman doesn’t go in for such dramatics: His only soundtrack is the sound of rustling leaves, chirping birds and occasional conversations among the citizens he keeps at a respectful arm’s length.The result is a classic on a par with “Winesburg, Ohio” and “Our Town,” a narrow slice of contemporary American life that manages to be both admiring, yet capable of polite skepticism.