The History of Concrete
(USA, 101 min.)
Dir./Prod. John Wilson
Prod. Clark Filio, Shirel Kozak, Allie Viti
John Wilson enjoys a good repair. As the former host of the hugely popular series that charted new terrain in non-fiction comedy, How to with John Wilson, he knows how to be handy. But when it comes time to patch a leak in his cracked foundation, he flubs the job.
Patching concrete is no amateur sport. Moreover, a cracked foundation provides the mother lode of metaphors for Wilson’s life. He’s between gigs and struggling to find his new project after the success of How to. A workshop about Hallmark Christmas movies leads him to explore the rinse-and-repeat world of digestible love stories. But he can’t quite seem to settle.
His mind keeps circling back to concrete. It’s an occupational hazard for a New Yorker. Everywhere Wilson looks in the concrete jungle, the material—surpassed only by water in terms of worldwide usage—plays a role in every structure of modern life.
What follows is a laugh-out-loud funny exploration of the history of concrete. Wilson’s rambling musings find great riches in the banal. Concrete is pretty boring taken on its own, but what happens on and around the cement mixture captures the frailty and complexity of life in equal measure.
Wilson’s fishing here and he knows it, but there’s a go-for-broke earnestness that can’t be beaten. He playfully goes in all sorts of tangents while more or less chronicling concrete’s role in shaping American life over the past century or so. Observing street names that will have a viewer giggling like a school girl and respectfully taking in goldfish funerals that mark a sidewalk aquarium tragically filled in with gravelly goop, Wilson brings a light touch to the ways in which the banality of grey concrete accents the idiosyncrasies of daily life.
His work in entertainment intersects with the dynamics of decay entailed in concrete production. As his camera observes chipped sidewalks and crumbling buildings, concrete layers admit that the substance doesn’t hold as well as it used to. One worker likens contemporary concrete to crummy cars built to break down and be replaced, rather than designed to endure. It’s a lot like Hollywood. Wilson notes how much effort his fellow filmmakers undertake in reproducing the past instead of repairing the present. Observations of streets refashioned for period pieces can’t help but find themselves in conversation with the cookie cutter Hallmark movies that are just a necessary paycheck away.
These lighthearted considerations build a droll consideration of city life. The History of Concrete speaks directly to anyone who likes their humour as dry the sidewalks of New York during peak daylight. Its wryly and warmly funny observations are for anyone whose simple pleasures include life’s big questions. Wilson’s sense of humour brings a relatable everyman charm that illustrates how sometimes the most novel and enlightening stories are everywhere around us.
Ironically but unsurprisingly, his Hollywood colleagues don’t get the point about a concrete movie. His chaotic pitches over Zoom offer amusing windows into an industry reared on formula and averse to originality. Perhaps in heeding their advice, he finds some “characters” for the show.
The History of Concrete finds some novel stories (or “segments,” as one guy prefers) to explore textures and colours of concrete in urban life. For example, Wilson curiously checks in with the followers of Sri Chinmoy, the late spiritual leader. Wilson observes how a dozen dedicated practitioners of Chinmoy’s philosophy of self-transcendence embark on a 3100 mile race over 52 days. For a month and a half, they rise before dawn and run from 6:00am to midnight. The runners get into a Zen rhythm while their peers cheer (chant) them on as they follow a small circuitous route, doing loop after loop of the same concrete block of the city. It’s a test of faith, endurance, and knees.
Meanwhile, Wilson checks in with a city cleaner with a singular métier. He vaporizes chewing gum (“the bird shit of humans”) from the sidewalks. This guy may be the single most colourful character among Wilson’s gregarious ensemble. Concrete’s characters are New Yorkers to the bone, but the Gum Buster offers some truly novel insights about human behaviour gleaned from years of steaming bubble-gum from the streets. For example, his observations about gum spatters at drive-thrus indicate that drivers spit their gum while ordering, while passengers generally wait until the pick-up window to ditch their wad. Inky gum markings on the concrete offers leopard-print proof of his theory. Mr. Gum Buster also bottles his own wine for customers, but Wilson unfortunately doesn’t get a swig. Perhaps that’s fodder for his next documentary: home brew.
The sommelier’s habit for swishing around a palette mirrors Wilson’s peculiar way of discerning concrete’s many flavours. The last act takes audiences inside a skinny home that doubles as a DIY underground concert venue. The story leads Wilson to a drummer who takes a shine to the director. The drummer finds himself bereft and overwhelmed with grief having unexpectedly lost the love of his life. As Wilson seemingly abandons the study of concrete mixtures, he probes deeper into the incredible story of this unlikely couple. It’s a great tale of things built to last. Another nice metaphor—and one that’s perhaps more uplifting than a crumbling foundation.
