The comic doc The History of Concrete finds filmmaker John Wilson looking for a project. His Emmy-nominated HBO series How to with John Wilson is off the air and some of his residual checks are in the single digits. He decides to embark on making a film with built-in absurdity – a documentary on the most uninteresting subject imaginable – concrete.
Off he goes with his camera and his wry sensibility- riffing off concrete and his own distractions. His deadpan movie pitches are funny, and so is the guy who takes outsized satisfaction at every piece of chewing gum that he sandblasts off the sidewalk. Other segments, like members of a Buddhist cults take turns walking around the same block in Queens until they amass 3100 miles, get tiresome.
But the funniest bits are only tenuously related to concrete, if at all. Wilson attends a screenwriting workshop on how to write and sell a Hallmark movie. And then he stumbles across a new business model that preserves the tattooed flesh of departed loved ones, suitable for framing. Yikes!
Now, John Wilson is an acquired taste. I find his nasal voice to be whiny, even when he’s not whining. He also overestimates the humor and insight in some situations and lingers on them too long. The History of Concrete, while in the same vein as Erroll Morris’ Gates of Heaven or Ross McElwee’s Sherman’s March, doesn’t approach matching the mastery of those auteurs. But, if you enjoy Wilson and his How to with John Wilson, then this is your movie.
The History of Concrete releases into theaters this weekend.