ohn Wilson gives his inimitably magpie-ish style of documentary-making the big screen treatment in this endlessly digressive investigation into a hilariously mundane topic.
What he’s pulled off here is a DIY parody of nonfiction filmmaking, poking fun at everything in a movie about nothing.
The History of Concrete 2026
For those who haven’t seen cult HBO docu-comedy series How to With John Wilson, The History of Concrete is an ideal initiation. Obsessively, constantly filming the world around him, Wilson’s work has a mosaic quality, finding uncanny, uproarious parallels and juxtapositions by sifting through hours of recordings of the kinds of things others wouldn’t deem worthy of capturing. Such is the magic of a Wilson project — the ability to draw profundity, poetry and hilarity from the mundane.
With Concrete, Wilson documents his woebegotten attempts to capitalise on his success, pitching a film about the dull grey substance that makes up our cities and infrastructure, along the way swerving into unpredictably labyrinthine detours. Hallmark movies, late rap legend DMX, the sand mandalas of Buddhist monks, an historically significant judge, an endurance race dedicated to a cult leader, infamous ex-New York Mayor Eric Adams, aging rock’n’rollers, the travails of Kim Kardashian: The History of Concrete is a study of contrasts, an endlessly digressive yet remarkably astute examination of existential questions of impermanence and loss. Throughout, the gentle empathy Wilson shows to those he encounters is what lingers: we’re all just trying to exist in the best way we know how.
- Tom Augustine