The History of Concrete is definitely about concrete. But it’s not, for the most part, about its history.
Aside from explaining that it’s created via a combination of cement, water, sand, and stone, that it’s the second most-used material in the world (behind water), and that the oldest American street made from it dates back to 1891 and is in Ohio, it imparts few—ahem—concrete facts about the durable substance.
Instead, John Wilson’s big-screen debut fixates on concrete as a means of grappling with the fears plaguing him in the wake of the cancellation of his hit HBO series How to with John Wilson, whose format this amazingly funny and touching film—premiering at the Sundance Film Festival—replicates to a tee.
A tale of impermanence, preservation, and regeneration, it finds the New York documentarian embarking on an odyssey of almost singular eccentricity. He ventures from Manhattan to Rome, from movie sets to sidewalks, from basements to music clubs, and various other wacko points in between, to ruminate on the fact that things break, crumble, and die, and yet, with a bit of effort, curiosity, inspiration, and toughness, also persevere.
The History of Concrete is an inherent outgrowth of its TV predecessor, beginning with the fact that it’s constructed as a longer episode of that show, complete with the nasally Wilson driving the action via dryly witty narration paired with on-the-street snapshots of daily life in NYC and elsewhere.
As Wilson elucidates, in the aftermath of How to with John Wilson’s conclusion, he became something of a minor celebrity, receiving Emmy nominations for his work and turning up as a question on Jeopardy! (which, amusingly, the contestants couldn’t answer).
He even attended A-list events such as a GQ gala for Kim Kardashian, footage of which is hilarious not simply because no-frills everyman Wilson is obviously out of place sitting at a table with the likes of Jacob Elordi and Dwayne Wade, but because—as seen in a brilliant punchline-y camera pan—he’s joined at the dinner by fellow gonzo funnyman Tim Robinson.
Admitting that “the space between projects is hard,” Wilson turns down the advertising gigs he’s offered (for Arby’s and Depends adult undergarments) and hits the streets with his trusty camera in tow, hoping for an epiphany.
That quest first leads him, during the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, to a workshop on how to write and sell a Hallmark movie. The instructor’s nuts-and-bolts breakdown of those holiday favorites—including the fact that such stories must always end with the message that “things will get better”—is funny precisely because it’s so bleak.
Nonetheless, things do get better for Wilson, courtesy of his apartment building’s perpetually flooding basement, which prompts an investigation into the concrete holding modern society together, with varying results.
Wilson’s doc is about arguably the least interesting topic in the universe, and he knows it, as do potential investors, who—in Zoom calls about funding the feature—appear less than enthusiastic. He doesn’t make them any happier by blowing his entire initial budget on a trip to Italy that yields little usable material. Even so, the further Wilson tumbles down this construction-grade rabbit hole, the funnier The History of Concrete becomes, zigging and zagging in ways that only he could imagine.
As in his prior work, the film coasts along on a quasi-free-association wavelength, with each point of interest leading to an unexpected or strange discovery that sends Wilson down a different path. Nonetheless, the genius of The History of Concrete is that, no matter its detours, it consistently manages to keep its focus on its overarching concerns, which, in this case, are concrete and, by extension, the ephemerality of man and all that he creates.
From vignettes about cracking sidewalks and skyscrapers, to a bizarro Jamaica, Queens race in which participants run around a single block from 6 a.m. to midnight for fifty-two days (totaling 3,100 miles) in honor of their late spiritual guru, Wilson’s seemingly random subjects all speak, in some underlying way, to his anxieties about mortality.
Amidst impromptu visits to the set of Marty Supreme and a host of conventions where he learns about the future of 3D concrete printing, Wilson is told that he looks like Ari Aster and needs a big musician to help sell his film.
To fulfill that directive, he visits underground rock shows where he fortuitously meets a musician whose effort to keep his metal dreams alive is as pertinent to the issues at hand as is his struggle to cope with the sudden death of his long-time partner. In this passage, The History of Concrete becomes a character study that recalls the “Finding Frances” finale of Nathan Fielder’s Nathan for You television series, catching the viewer off guard with its weird, off-kilter empathy.
Wilson mixes the heavy with the humorous, populating his film with all sorts of out-of-left-field jokes, whether it’s a shot of him figuratively “crushing” the heads of NYC Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul with his fingers (à la The Kids in the Hall), or visiting a public pool where staffers explicate the different categories of poop that would cause them to shut down the facility.
The History of Concrete is profound and silly, and it’s the latter which propels the proceedings as they veer from city council votes to makeshift aquariums to a mind-blowingly bizarre business that fashions mementos out of the dead’s tattoos by touching up, and then mounting in picture frames, the patches of skin that boasted their ink artwork.
At approximately three times the length of an average How to With John Wilson installment, The History of Concrete occasionally loses a bit of steam. Nonetheless, Wilson has a knack for unforeseen tangents, quips, and puns—the best (and corniest) of which is him stating “you shudder to think” as he cuts to a montage of window shutters.
With his maiden cinematic venture, Wilson doesn’t break new ground so much as continue his idiosyncratic artistry on a larger scale. That’s more than enough, however, to make his doc one of this year’s Sundance Film Festival standouts, and to prove that moneymen should learn to stop worrying and unconditionally love the comedian.
