By John Corrado
Perhaps the funniest thing about director John Wilson’s The History of Concrete, the comedian and documentarian’s endearingly offbeat feature debut, is that we actually do learn a lot about concrete by watching the film.
Playing in a similar vein to his HBO series How To with John Wilson, Wilson’s film is a highly meta-textual documentary that finds him trying to get funding to make a movie about concrete, but in the process, making a film about, well, nearly everything.
Wilson starts by exploring his backyard of New York City, and the concrete surfaces that cover much of our urban spaces. But he branches out to focus on an array of topics, ranging from building codes, affordable housing, the business of sidewalk gum removal, and Hallmark Christmas movies. Early on, Wilson attends a seminar on how to write a Hallmark movie, and in some ways this formula comes to define the narrative structure of his film.
In another detour, Wilson introduces us to the annual Self-Transcendence 3100 Mile Race in Jamaica, Queens. Created in honour of spiritual leader Sri Chinmoy, the runners go in circles for eighteen hours a day for over fifty days straight, running in a loop around a high school. They are quite literally going in circles and ending up in the same physical place, but, by doing so, they claim they are reaching a sort of spiritual enlightenment.
Wilson’s film feels the same way. It’s a series of segments and detours that keep circling back to the same central themes. In doing so, Wilson is exploring deeper aspects of the human condition and our relationship to physical surfaces. And, in a roundabout way, we actually do learn a fair bit about the properties of concrete and its history as a building material.
This includes a budget-chewing trip to Rome so Wilson can explore how many structures built with the material are still standing centuries later. Wilson also explores if 3D-printed concrete buildings will be the future of construction. On the other side of the coin, Wilson introduces us to the local NYC activists dedicated to saving a patch of green space from being paved over with – you guessed it – concrete, and turned into a skatepark.
But, as much as this is a film about building materials and their history, it also doubles as human interest documentary. This is especially true when we are introduced to Jack Macco, an eccentric amateur musician in Long Island, who is one of those great, singular documentary subjects in the vein of the guys in seminal classic American Movie.
The experience of watching The History of Concrete is like constantly uncovering new delights. There is a playful quality to the film, with Wilson presenting it all in a way that makes us curious to learn about these various subjects. The way that his film meanders, only to eventually find its way back to the main through-line, feels like a comedian telling an elaborate joke and laying the groundwork for a delayed punchline.
Wilson’s interest in all sorts of people and subjects shines through The History of Concrete. Yes, the film plays off the dryly comic absurdity of trying to make a film about concrete, and it’s frequently very funny, but Wilson’s genuine curiosity on the subject goes far beyond a one-joke setup. Through these endless detours, Wilson’s film gets pretty darn close to ending up somewhere profound.
Film Rating: ★★★½ (out of 4)
