With “The History of Concrete,” John Wilson takes the least attention-grabbing topic possible — the boring grey composite used for sidewalks, overpasses and pretentious artwork movies like “The Brutalist” — and crafts what’s more likely to be probably the most entertaining documentary of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. Making an attempt to extract laughs (and deeper insights, every so often) from a free-associative take a look at folks and tasks with ties of some variety to the ugly constructing materials, Wilson feigns curiosity in “one thing that occupies a lot of your visible setting,” presenting what seems like a parody of nonfiction filmmaking (the loosely structured essay kind, at the least).
A key conceit of “The Historical past of Concrete” is that nobody of their proper thoughts would finance such a movie, a lot much less wish to watch it. The helmer (and host of HBO’s “How To With John Wilson”) would additionally such as you to suppose he’s completely unqualified to supervise such a mission. And but, right here it’s, premiering on opening night time of Sundance’s closing version in Park Metropolis, Utah. Until you’re employed for the concrete business (and people appear to be enjoyable people, from a go to to a Las Vegas conference), it’s laborious to think about you saying, “Sufficient with the jokes. Inform us extra about concrete!”
Wilson opens the movie in his signature second-person model, telling you what “you” are experiencing in his nasal New York accent, utilizing ultra-specific particulars that clearly apply solely to himself (comparable to “You sadly blew 100% of your movie’s funds in your journey to Rome,” the place he went to see the two,100-year-old concrete dome that sits atop the Pantheon). Earlier than deciding on concrete because the loosely unifying theme — the cement that binds “the stuff you want” wedged into the movie — Wilson bemoans the top of his HBO sequence and the dwindling residual checks it brings.
Bored — which manifests itself extra as bemused curiosity, as Wilson collects no matter absurdities catch his curiosity — he decides to attend the one class the Writers Guild supplied through the 2023 strike: “Find out how to Promote and Write a Hallmark Film.” Wilson has no intention of creating a type of cookie-cutter made-for-TV romances, however it’s amusing to infiltrate the areas the place the system is shared, adopted by a trek to a dreary Canadian soundstage the place these goals are spun from recycled props. You’ll be able to guess that Wilson will refer again to the emotional methods he realized at school later in his personal movie, whilst just about every part else about his strategy rejects the “aspirational escapism” Hallmark motion pictures supply.
Armed along with his handheld Sony digital camera (or else his iPhone in a pinch), Wilson appears to be rolling always, obsessively gathering and chronicling a world from which the machine serves a paradoxical perform. On one hand, it serves as an invite for strangers to have interaction with him, however it’s additionally a handy social buffer, delivering a sure ironic distance (room for him to insert sarcasm and judgment within the edit). Within the custom of essay filmmakers like Ross McElwee and Kirsten Johnson, Wilson makes use of the digital camera to touch upon the world round him, in addition to to course of his personal life selections, constructing in useless ends, exasperating detours and different shameless digressions for comedic impact — the extra random they appear, the extra amusing audiences are apt to search out them (and the extra satisfying, when he finds a approach to make these tangents related).
Does Wilson actually care about concrete? I’m undecided it issues, as the subject gives all of the excuse he must enterprise out and pose questions to finish strangers. For instance, anybody who has lived in New York Metropolis is more likely to have seen the numerous chewing gum stains that besmirch town’s sidewalks. “Gum is just like the chicken shit of individuals,” Wilson muses, observing patterns of how and the place people spit out their chud earlier than going out of his approach to observe down a man devoted to blasting discarded wads off the in any other case pristine concrete. “That gum is busted,” the person beams after every profitable removing.
With this sequence, Wilson has answered a query you in all probability by no means thought to ask, stitching collectively the bizarre tangents his mind follows with wry voice-over. It may be laborious to comply with how the simply distracted director will get from one thought to the following, as in a go to to Bellefontaine, Ohio, to watch the oldest concrete road in America. Wilson interviews a driving teacher, who introduces him to a girl who retains a swatch of her husband’s pores and skin framed on her wall. That leads Wilson to interview the corporate that makes a speciality of preserving the tattoos of useless family members, and down the rabbit gap he goes.
At instances, Wilson teases himself for not being a extra refined director, leaping round from the concrete hand- and footprints outdoors Hollywood’s well-known Chinese language Theatre to an unreleased DMX Christmas album. On the lookout for a approach to increase recent funds for the meandering mission (based mostly on a foul joke about it being a “rockumentary”), Wilson goes on the lookout for a working musician with a compelling private tragedy. He lands on Jack Macco, lead singer of the obscure heavy steel band Nebulus, whom he meets providing free samples at his neighborhood liquor retailer. Elsewhere in Queens, Wilson observes the contestants in guru Sri Chinmoy’s 3,100-mile self-transcendence race, who circle the identical stretch of concrete for weeks on finish.
Are we coping with a comedic genius right here or some sort of buffoon? The day earlier than seeing “The Historical past of Concrete,” I made a visitor look at a seminar on Agnès Varda at CalArts, the place a pupil described the French director’s work as “deceptively naive” — the proper phrase to encapsulate the best way Varda assembled “The Gleaners and I,” an intricate essay movie so intuitive folks typically mistake it for being easy. Is Wilson able to such low-key sophistication? Not likely, however he does acknowledge (the best way Hallmark film writers and AI predictive language fashions do) how circling round to and in the end cementing one or two stable concepts can excuse the cracks in an in any other case frivolous endeavor.
