John Wilson made the film The History of Concrete — TIME
In the United States, filmmaker John Wilson made the feature-length documentary The History of Concrete, in which concrete becomes a pretext for observations about people, chance encounters, and personal reflections. As TIME notes, the film continues the approach familiar from the HBO series How To With John Wilson: the author starts with an everyday topic but gradually moves in unexpected directions.
From renovation to concrete
At the beginning of the film, Wilson talks about losing his bearings after the series ended, searching for inspiration and work. He attends a workshop supported by the Writers Guild of America on creating a successful romantic story for Hallmark. Later, while doing home renovations, Wilson notices the ubiquity of concrete — and this is how the idea for the documentary arose.
The director explains the difference between cement and concrete: cement is a component of concrete, which also includes water, sand, and stone. Wilson travels to Rome, where he films examples of early Roman concrete, visits a wax museum and a convention dedicated to concrete. To take part in the convention, he had to sign a document promising not to portray concrete in a negative light.
Among the side stories is a visit to a company that preserves loved ones’ tattoos together with the skin on which they were made.
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Encounters with characters
An important part of the film is Wilson’s encounters with residents of New York and Long Island. Among them is a man who runs the Brooklyn company GumBusters. He drives around the city with a special device that removes dark stains of chewing gum ground into the pavement.
The film also shows Wilson’s friendship with musician Jack, who regularly performs in small bars on Long Island and during the day distributes whiskey and bourbon samples in liquor stores. After the sudden death of his fiancée, Jack seeks Wilson’s company. The director learns that the musician’s partner was a respected judge and the first American of Asian descent to become a judge in New York.
TIME describes The History of Concrete as a leisurely journey following the logic of Wilson’s associations, in which the story of a building material gives way to stories about everyday life, loss, and connections between people.
