“The History of Concrete” is one of the year’s most fluid documentaries. This intriguing, often amusing reorientation of how we see the material world features, and is directed by, the inimitable John Wilson (HBO’s “How To With John Wilson”) as he traverses New York and speaks with its denizens. The more he asks passersby, “Do you ever think about concrete?” the more they’re prone to ignore his strange question. In the process, the movie begins to fulfill its purpose, drawing our attention to the foundational details of our physical world that we usually give shockingly little thought.
The conceit is hilariously self-reflexive, beginning with Wilson searching for his next project and signing up for a Hallmark movie workshop during Hollywood’s 2023 writers’ strike . As he searches for funding, his detours take him far and wide, from New York’s nooks and crannies, to rural North American townships where concrete is made and sold, Hallmark films are produced and Chef Boyardee is buried. That last one makes sense in context, as part of Wilson’s larger, idiosyncratic social tapestry.
All the while, he contrasts his dryly poetic observations with ordinary images captured with his handheld camera, ranging from dried gum on a sidewalk — which launches him into a detour to discover how the city’s surfaces are maintained — to a dog puking from a car window, as he muses about his search for art and meaning. Your mileage may vary. Wilson’s observations are sharp, to the point, and for better or worse, leave little room to consider their underlying meaning (or lack thereof) before moving on to the next thing. Even detractors must admit: The film is nothing if not snappy.
A fascinating and often moving X-ray of a city that never sleeps.
In attempting to follow both the rules of Hallmark melodramas and the demands of potential investors, Wilson ends up stumbling upon a myriad of people and scenarios he works to retrofit into these economic and artistic structures. These range from a struggling musician he meets at a liquor store, to his own ill-considered venture as a landlord — the closest he comes to becoming an expert on concrete himself. As the title promises, he dives into the history of the material, a dry subject he makes humorous through his own trepidatious voice-overs.
Granted, Wilson’s “every sentence is a punchline” can be grating, and not every joke lands. But that’s OK. That he never quite seems sure of his abilities, or his subject matter, is part of the movie’s sleight of hand. It proves uniquely vulnerable, and eventually disarming, when he stumbles upon genuine grief and tragedy.
Since the movie’s Sundance premiere, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has pledged to fix the crumbling Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. This likely would’ve happened regardless, but when historians trace its repair, they’ll find it predated by scenes from Wilson’s film, where he giddily follows an expert detailing the necessity of exactly such an undertaking — a serendipity befitting of happy-go-lucky authorial voice.
Likewise, Wilson seems to stumble upon firm dramatic structures by accident amid his scrutiny of rickety infrastructure. The result is a fascinating and often moving X-ray of a city that never sleeps: a double portrait of the people closest to the ground, and the silent foundation beneath millions of restless feet.
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The Concrete Jungle Where Dreams Are Made
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