The HBO docuseries How To with John Wilson was a celebration of mundanity, with each episode starting out with a simple, borderline insignificant topic: how to dispose of dead batteries, find a good parking spot, cook perfect risotto, split the check at a restaurant. Then Wilson would use it as a springboard for deeper analyses of how cities, communities and subcultures function.
Wilson’s film debut, The History of Concrete, is a feature-length version of his show, using the same charming stream-of-consciousness to explore exactly what the title advertises. The result is funny, poignant and surprisingly informational: By the end of the movie, you will know more — and think differently — about concrete than you did before.
It is also a movie about its own creation. In his trademark fumbling narration, Wilson tells us he got the idea for the film by looking around his New York neighborhood and noticing all the crumbling, cracking concrete. And to fix it, the city simply slaps another layer of concrete on top. He wonders, what’s the deal with that?
He pitches it to financiers. They’re not so sure it’s bankable. But Wilson starts filming anyway, and as on How To, he follows his subjects down whatever weird paths they lead him. He takes a class that teaches the formula for writing Hallmark Christmas movies; visits an Ohio town that boasts both the oldest concrete street in America and the country’s shortest street; and lingers at parties during an annual concrete convention (yes, that’s a thing).
Along the way, Wilson trains his ever-roving camera on the quirky people he encounters. There’s a guy whose job is blasting squashed gum off sidewalks, an opera singer whose apartment is filled with toxic dust from a nearby concrete recycling plant, and the followers of a New Age religion who jog around Queens for weeks on end. He becomes most fascinated with the middle-aged frontman of an indie metal band, who shares Wilson’s frustrations about people not appreciating his art.
Like the early documentary work of Errol Morris and Ross McElwee, Wilson’s film finds unexpected comedy in the absurd details of people’s lives and professions. But he also finds humanity and wisdom in unlikely places, because he lingers when other filmmakers would walk on by. His running commentary wanders from one issue to another — urban development, gentrification, AI, political infighting — but it’s Wilson’s fellow New Yorkers who are the real subjects.
It’s typical of Wilson’s style that the film’s key moment is a passing one. He’s filming two guys laying concrete, and they talk about how new mixes aren’t as strong and resilient as they used to be. It’s all a byproduct of planned obsolescence, one of them explains, without actually using the term “planned obsolescence.” And then he says to Wilson, “But I don’t know of anything that lasts forever. Do you?”
That off-hand observation breaks the movie wide open, because The History of Concrete is ultimately about impermanence. Buildings get torn down, friends move away, people die, and crumbling old concrete is covered over with newer, weaker concrete.