Just as the title indicates, The History of Concrete is a documentary about the world’s most ubiquitous building material that most of us never think about; the drab utilitarian substance used in our roads, buildings, and sidewalks.
But the new film by John Wilson, the auteur behind the HBO series How to With John Wilson, is also about many other things: gentrification, crumbling infrastructure, the housing crisis, climate change, the perilous state of the film industry, NIMBYism, historic preservation, the difficulty of making a living as an artist, and the impermanence of all things.
The film, in select theaters today, is structured like an extended episode of How To With John Wilson, one of the strangest, funniest, and most poignant shows to grace TV screens in the last decade. Technically a documentary, the series was more like a digressive video essay about daily life in New York City, told from the singular perspective of Wilson, its writer, creator, and star.
Each episode ostensibly offered a lesson in some simple chore — e.g., “How to Split the Check,” “How to Make Small Talk” — but meandered in delightfully strange, often profound ways. The series used footage filmed on the streets of New York City (and sometimes other places, like Las Vegas) and juxtaposed it with Wilson’s stammering, deadpan narration. The show was wildly discursive, and Wilson had a way of finding powerful insights about the human condition in the most quotidian objects. (In the episode “How to Put Up Scaffolding,” he determined that the omnipresent scaffolding in New York City is a sign of how much people fear random death.)
Three years after How To With John Wilson concluded its run on HBO, Wilson has turned to another subject that does not exactly scream “cinema.” (What’s next, The History of Drywall?) But, as usual, Wilson has found the sublime — and even the political — in the seemingly mundane.
Wilson’s journey begins when he attempts some DIY repairs at his home in Queens. When the patch job fails to hold up, he discovers that he used the wrong kind of cement, a realization that leads him straight down the rabbit hole. He attends a (surprisingly debauched) concrete industry convention, checks out a crumbling stretch of roadway in Brooklyn (that Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently vowed to fix), and learns all kinds of fascinating tidbits about concrete, like the fact that between 2011 and 2014, China used more concrete than the United States had in the prior century. He also uncovers some troubling information, like the fact that concrete — while essential for building new infrastructure and housing — is really, really bad for the environment.
But Wilson, a 21st-century flaneur, is more interested in observing than lecturing. The filmmaker has an evident fondness for normal people — who are not to be confused with normies. He gravitates to the memorable kooks, weirdos, eccentrics, and characters who live everywhere in the world but are especially numerous in New York City. Among the oddballs we meet in The History of Concrete are a rock musician who moonlights handing out booze samples at a liquor store, a man who specializes in removing gum from city sidewalks, and a guy who preserves the tattoos of dead people (skin and all).
Even more than How To With John Wilson, The History of Concrete finds Wilson looking inward as he deals with professional and creative setbacks. Despite having had a successful show on HBO and being semi-famous enough to get invited to dinner with Kim Kardashian, Wilson struggles to get his movie financed while feeling increasingly isolated. He worries that stubbornly pursuing the project has “permanently disfigured” his “personal and professional life.” And he frets about the future of his art form in a rapidly consolidating media environment.
“You read in the news that all the old media companies were continuing to aggregate into a single behemoth,” he says, speaking in the second person as is his style, “but when you treat cultural artifacts like poker chips, it’s hard to know what will happen when the casino shuts down.”
Frustrated, Wilson attends a Writers Guild workshop on selling a Hallmark movie. He is told that storytelling ambition is not really the point of these extremely popular, if extremely formulaic romances. (“Now is not the time for Ken Burns or The Sopranos,” says the instructor.) He tries to apply these rules to his movie about concrete, but — as you can imagine — it’s not easy.
He gradually draws a connection between the forces that have made both the movies and places like New York City less interesting: a seemingly boundless appetite for generic, disposable products that can be easily reproduced but have little enduring value. While spying on the set of Marty Supreme, a movie that meticulously reproduced the grit of midcentury Manhattan, he observes that “we often spend more money recreating the stuff that we miss than actually trying to preserve what’s currently disappearing.”
Wilson, who made a video about potholes with Mamdani earlier this year, is clearly interested in public spaces and how they shape people’s lives. In interviews, he talks knowledgeably about issues like rent control, e-bikes, and vacant storefronts. If the documentary thing doesn’t work out, Wilson might consider a new career in urban planning or municipal politics. Selfishly, though, I hope he sticks with the movies — and gets to work right away on the follow-up about drywall.
More great stuff to watch from the comfort of your couch:
Youth (HBO, Sunday)
Over the years, Sharon Horgan has tackled marriage, parenthood, divorce, and death. Now she’s back with Youth, a series about another chapter in life: middle age. She stars as Alex, a fifty-year-old London divorcee and frustrated member of the sandwich generation. While juggling a demanding but demoralizing job in publishing, she also has to care for her aging parents and her surly eighteen-year-old son, Ruari (Aran Murphy), all while going through the emotional and hormonal roller coaster of menopause and trying to find love. Even though she’s far more glamorous than most of us could ever hope to be, Horgan has a way of seeming utterly relatable. If you are, or have ever been, a middle-age professional woman overwhelmed by it all, you will laugh with recognition at Youth. If you’re not, and have never been, you’ll probably enjoy it anyway.
Trespasses (Sunday, PBS)
Adapted from Louise Kennedy’s novel, this four-part series stars the great Lola Petticrew as Cushla, a Catholic schoolteacher in 1970s Belfast who embarks on a passionate affair with Michael (Tom Cullen), a Protestant barrister notorious for defending accused IRA members. The romance puts them both in danger, but for Cushla it offers an escape from the drudgery of caring for her mother, Gina (Gillian Anderson), a fiery and opinionated alcoholic, and pouring pints at her family’s pub on the weekends. As their relationship intensifies and Cushla grows close to a student whose father was nearly killed by sectarians, the specter of violence grows increasingly real. Written by Ailbhe Keogan and directed by Dawn Shadforth, the series is gorgeous to look at and to listen to, thanks to vivid garb and musical deep cuts that bring light to a dark story about the Troubles.
Meredith Blake is the culture columnist for The Contrarian