If you know anything about filmmaker John Wilson, you’ll intuit that his new documentary The History of Concrete is barely about concrete at all. Earlier this decade, Wilson’s HBO show, How To With John Wilson, provided a sometimes compelling, sometimes aggravating glimpse into the lives of ordinary New Yorkers, as well as into Wilson’s own woolly, discursive mode of thinking. In one episode, Wilson walked around a New York neighborhood until he saw an Italian flag, figuring that the person who’d hung it would know enough about Italian food to help him learn to cook risotto, which he wanted to make as a treat for his elderly, babushka’ed landlady. In another installment, he sought ways to protect his furniture from his beloved yet destructive cat, and in so doing, stumbled upon an anti-circumcision activist, who in turn led him to a musician and inventor who’d developed a foreskin restoration device. (It was called the TLC Tugger.) In Wilson’s world, the phrase “One thing leads to another” takes on heightened meaning. He shifts gears according to who and what he encounters during the filmmaking process, which is how a simple quest to cover a chair can morph into an anxiety-riddled meditation on the possibility that maybe life is better uncut.
The History of Concrete is essentially more of the same, though this time, Wilson’s observations are stretched out at a more leisurely pace, rather than pieced together into bite-sized segments. Wilson begins by describing the ennui he felt after his show ended. He used to have a purpose; suddenly, he needed to both seek inspiration and drum up work. He describes unsavory moneymaking offers that have come his way, like doing Depend underwear ads with the Naked Cowboy—an easy No. He laments his lack of direction. In his characteristic wry juxtaposition of filmed images and voiceover, he explains that he’d always been proud of taking “the road less traveled, where no one else would dare to voyage,” over grab-and-go footage of street signs that read “Buttzman Road” and “Titman Road.” He takes a WGA-sponsored workshop on how to write a successful Hallmark romance. Then, while doing home repairs—badly, he admits—he begins musing on the fact that concrete is everywhere. Why not make a documentary about it?
Wilson tries to sell his idea to a group of poker-faced potential supporters, each enclosed in a tidy little Zoom square. Somehow, the idea gets off the ground. From there, Wilson explains the basics of this ubiquitous material. For example, he makes the distinction between cement—a component of concrete—and concrete itself, a mix of cement, water, sand, and stone. He travels to Rome, where he films examples of early Roman concrete and also visits a janky wax museum, because why not? He attends a concrete convention, and notes that in order to attend, he had to sign a document promising he would not “paint concrete in a negative light.” He visits a company that preserves the tattoos of loved ones, which also means conserving the skin underneath, which makes the whole thing suitable for framing. You may have no idea what this has to do with concrete, but you’ll be so amazed—and probably appalled—that you’ll forget why it matters.
But if Wilson has a great gift, it lies in being able to talk to anyone without mocking them. OK, he may gently mock his subjects a little—but only in an amused way, never a cruel one. The best segments in The History of Concrete involve his encounters with the New Yorkers, or Long Islanders, who are essentially right in his own backyard. There’s the exceedingly good-natured guy who runs an outfit called GumBusters out of Brooklyn: he travels around the city with a special gizmo that “vaporizes” dark splotches of gum that have been ground into the sidewalk. Most affecting of all is the friendship Wilson strikes up with a bar-band musician named Jack, who regularly plays dive bars on Long Island. When Jack’s fiancée dies suddenly, it’s Wilson’s company he seeks.
Jack, a somewhat portly past-middle-age rock’n’roller who, by day, hands out whiskey and bourbon samples in liquor stores, is bereft at the loss of his love. Wilson investigates and find out that Jack’s deceased partner was an esteemed judge, the first Asian American judge in New York City. He finds an old picture of the two of them and realizes they’d been a couple for a very long time, musing aloud on how they had truly built a life together, though they may seem like opposites.
Again, what does any of this have to do with concrete? Aside from, perhaps, the metaphorical truth that the most enduring relationships are built on a solid foundation of trust and love? The History of Concrete will answer some questions you never thought to ask about that hard, gray substance found in every developed area around the world. But mostly, it will show you how Wilson’s mind works, how it jumps from one seemingly random thought to the next and somehow miraculously connects them. Depending on your tolerance for Wilson’s somewhat rambling narration, as well as his twangy, cartoon-character speaking voice, your mind may sometimes wander off his track. But Wilson is an affable armchair tour guide into offline worlds you’d never have thought to explore, and the movie has a casual, ambling charm. This is killing time in movie form—though it also flirts with the possibility that killing time and spending it may amount to the same thing.
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