The History of Concrete review – John Wilson’s first movie is an absurd triumph

Sundance film festival: the documentarian’s feature debut, essentially an extended episode of his HBO series, turns an exploration of concrete into a meditation on change

For those in the know, the release of the Sundance film festival lineup last December contained one perfect, tantalizing log line, for a documentary plainly called The History of Concrete: “After attending a workshop on how to write and sell a Hallmark movie, filmmaker John Wilson tries to use the same formula to sell a documentary about concrete.”

Wilson, a film-maker from the Nathan Fielder school of meandering, bone-dry observational comedy, is a master of the modern documentary-essay-memoir, with an uncanny eye for the idiosyncratic, unintentionally hilarious and disturbing vignettes hiding in plain sight. Over three near-perfect seasons, his peerless HBO series How To With John Wilson, executive-produced by Fielder, spun spoofs of practical guides (“How to Cook the Perfect Risotto”) into profound meditations on the loudness, loneliness and ridiculousness of modern urban life, each half-hour episode a magic trick of elaborate, bizarre tangents reined in at the last second. For fans of the show – in my opinion, the single best TV series about New York this decade – Wilson’s feature documentary debut, supposedly about the most iconic element of urban life, was a must-see.

The History of Concrete is screening at the Sundance film festival and is seeking distribution