A comforting and comedic viewing experience during the pandemic, John Wilson’s multiple seasons of ‘How To’ provided a digressive solace in the isolation of one’s four walls. Set in New York City, which feels like any and every form of psychological human quirks are at the ready if you pay attention, Wilson’s highly anticipated full length film, The History of Concrete, collects those oddities and idiosyncrasies and presents them in full force. Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival at the start of this year, the 101 minute feature takes a seemingly mundane subject like concrete and unravels the myriad ways it’s simultaneously everywhere and nowhere in our general consciousness. 

During the Writer’s Guild of America strike in 2023, Wilson signs up for a course on how to craft a memorable Hallmark movie, emphasizing points like trauma is acceptable as long as it ends on a high note, scout your location in Canada and provide a form of comfortable escapism. Loosely (emphasis on loosely) following these plot points, Wilson embarks on a lengthier stream of consciousness and a curious eye he’s known for, essentially expanding on his half hour meanderings into a feature documentary. 

While much of Wilson’s observations are humorous on the surface, he does delve into existential themes of what is art and what endures in an artist’s form of creativity and creation, as well as the cyclical nature of concepts and constructs created and broken down. Starting on a more personal note of How To’s termination on HBO and the aftermath of finding work and funding, Wilson ventures into a more vast territory of the struggles artists face in their personal work as well as the subjective meaning adhered to in a life. The Sri Chinmoy Race captured in the documentary (essentially a small group of runners completing a 3100 race around a one block radius of concrete sidewalk in New York) stood out as a seemingly mundane and perhaps banal concept, but results in a transcendent-like experience for the runners completing it. It’s in these quiet, meditative observations that Wilson’s craft and brief narrations genuinely excel. 

While he does still capture the humor, the bizarre and an unassuming poignancy, lending the topic of concrete down other paths of DMX’s incomplete Christmas album, 3D printed Starbucks cafes, and workers whose job it is to clear gum stains out of sidewalks, The History of Concrete occasionally feels too circuitous and like a struggle to complete its runtime. The question of whether Wilson is poking fun at or quietly triumphing the subjects he holds in the camera lens is also often put into question; while there are clear, broad themes of rooting for the underdog and observing the inevitability of impermanence, the nature of Wilson’s deadpan and offbeat narrative and quick cycles of footage often makes his intentions unclear. Perhaps divisive in its reception, or at the very least easily (mis)understood as dry and surface level comedy, there’s an abundance of meditative themes to dig into, once you get past the cracks.