The secret message of John Wilson’s debut feature documentary, ‘The History of Concrete’

Nobody who’s remotely familiar with John Wilson’s funny, angsty HBO series How To with John Wilson will be surprised to discover that his debut feature documentary, The History of Concrete, is not really about concrete. Wilson introduces us to a guy who removes tattoos from corpses and mounts the dead inked skin as mementos for loved ones. He interviews a New York park official who details how to purge poops from public swimming pools. When the film touches on the subject of concrete, Wilson quickly pivots to another. He’ll do anything not to dwell on his nominal topic. He never wrestles with concrete’s mass, omnipresence, or effects on the lives of nearly everyone on the planet. The topic is too big for comfort, too demanding of his very modern quick, jump-cutting attention deficits. If the point is that concrete defies sustained attention, it’s a good one. Advertently or not, by the end of the film, Wilson reveals two of the most astonishing facts about the world’s most-used material: Concrete is largely unseen, and its invisibility endangers us all. Not because concrete itself is villainous, but because our lazy, distracted, often nonexistent engagement with it invites disaster…