From Sidewalks to Soul: John Wilson’s History of Concrete

Hey, Mr. Wilson, how do you make concrete interesting?

Concrete is everywhere. It is beneath our feet, holding up our apartments, shaping sidewalks, and quietly supporting modern life without ever asking for attention. It is the ultimate background character, a material we rarely think about unless it cracks or crumbles. And yet, in The History of Concrete, John Wilson somehow turns this overlooked substance into the main attraction.

The History of Concrete is a feature-length documentary that takes something utterly ordinary and reveals just how strange, human, and emotionally resonant it can be. Using concrete as his entry point, Wilson explores New York City, creativity, uncertainty, and the small moments that sneak up on you when you least expect them. Much like his HBO series How To with John Wilson, the film feels less like a documentary lesson and more like a wandering conversation with a deeply observant guide who notices everything most of us pass by without seeing.

On the surface, the film examines concrete as the building block of urban life. It represents permanence, weight, and infrastructure, but also decay, repair, and the slow passage of time. Wilson treats concrete as both subject and metaphor, using it to reflect on how cities are constructed and how people live inside them. The effect is quietly profound. You start thinking about sidewalks the way you think about memories, layered, worn down, and constantly patched together.

What gives the documentary its emotional weight is how personal it becomes. Wilson reflects on his career following the end of his HBO series and what it means to keep creating when the future feels uncertain. He documents his experiences during the 2023 Writers Guild strike, including moments that are awkward, funny, and unexpectedly revealing, such as attending a seminar on writing Hallmark movies. These detours never feel random. They feel honest, mirroring the way real life unfolds without a clear outline.

The storytelling is unmistakably John Wilson. It is free-associative, gently chaotic, and filled with chance encounters with New Yorkers who say things no script could ever capture. Humor runs throughout the film, but so does vulnerability. One moment you are laughing at an offhand observation, and the next you are sitting with a quiet truth about aging, ambition, or creative doubt.

Critics have praised The History of Concrete for making a supposedly dull subject engaging, but that praise only scratches the surface. The film is not really about concrete. It is about attention. It is about learning to look closely at the things we take for granted, whether that is a sidewalk, a city, or our own lives. By the end, Wilson once again pulls off his signature trick, making the ordinary feel meaningful and the mundane feel deeply human.

That idea lands even harder when you consider what concrete really is. It is the most widely used man-made material on the planet, with more than 10 billion tons produced every year. Only water is consumed more. Concrete is so woven into daily life that it almost disappears. We walk on it, live inside it, lean against it, and rarely stop to think about how much of civilization depends on this quiet, grey substance.

Concrete’s history stretches back thousands of years. Early forms were used around 700 BC by Bedouin traders to build water cisterns. The Romans refined it by mixing lime, water, and volcanic ash called pozzolana, creating structures that still stand today. The Pantheon remains the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world, nearly two thousand years later, a reminder that innovation does not always announce itself loudly.

Today, concrete shapes nearly everything around us. Roads, bridges, apartment towers, kitchen countertops, and backyard patios all rely on it. It is fire-resistant, water-resistant, and continues to gain strength long after it is poured, reaching most of its durability within the first month but hardening for years afterward. There is something poetic in that idea, the notion that what looks finished is still becoming itself.

Some of humanity’s most ambitious projects are monuments to concrete. The Three Gorges Dam in China is the largest concrete structure on Earth. Record-breaking pours for developments like The Venetian in Las Vegas and the Wilshire Grand Center in Los Angeles pushed engineering limits and reshaped city skylines. These structures are not just technical achievements. They are cultural statements about how we build and what we value.

Concrete even has an unexpected place in pop culture. Thomas Edison imagined entire homes, furniture, and even pianos made from concrete, revealing just how versatile and misunderstood the material can be. In film, art, and design, concrete often symbolizes modernity, strength, or emotional distance, even as it quietly provides shelter and support.

What makes concrete so fascinating, and what John Wilson captures so beautifully, is how it exists at the intersection of the practical and the poetic. It is anonymous yet essential, ancient yet modern, brutal and beautiful at the same time. Concrete shapes our cities, our movement, and even our moods, whether we notice it or not. Once you really start looking at it, concrete stops being boring. It becomes a story, and one we are all standing inside.