NZIFF Round Table Reviews: The History of Concrete

WEB EXCLUSIVE | REVIEW | NZIFF 

This is part of a series of roundtable discussions and extended dialogues conducted by Ricky Lai (@rickthelai), Trevor Pronoso (@CleverGurl), Madeline Smith (@prime4illusion), and Caeden Tipler (@ctipler) on films that have premiered at NZIFF 2026.

The History of Concrete (2026)

dir. John Wilson

USA, 101 mins

The following exchange is between Ricky and Madeline on John Wilson's latest film, The History of Concrete.

Ricky: Overheard from an audience member on the way out of the theatre: "That was contrived. It was so, so contrived." I liked this one a whole, whole lot.

The central gag for me in The History of Concrete is that each time Wilson takes a Zoom meeting with executives about having this film funded, I can't help but ask, "how did this get approved in the end?" which is the same question you ask when he talks about the shoddy concrete jobs. Of course, the stakes are far higher for the buildings and pavement than they are for Wilson's film; The History of Concrete isn't as vital to New York's infrastructure as actual concrete. That's a contrivance that Wilson leans into, and it's also a good joke: he doesn't just put his camera on funny things; he seeks patterns—sometimes via tenuous links—in those objects. Whether you want to question those contrivances, he draws an impressive link between his own failing investments, his compromises to bridge funding gaps, and the widening cracks in poorly poured concrete across the city. He doesn't say that himself; he lets other people (and objects) do it for him. These contrived patterns are very much the building blocks—no pun intended—of the filmmaking process: the editing. Visual puns ('between projects' = hot dog between buns) prove his point; hanging with working-class renters naturally helps reroute his narrative back to his overarching statement because it applies to all of them, too. Given Wilson's cast-of-misfits approach, it's no surprise Josh Safdie and Ronald Bronstein were executive producers—they probably gave this project a lot of actual stability.

The latter half, with the liquor store employee, reminded me of Nathan For You: Finding Frances, which resurfaced questions in my mind—not necessarily ones I completely agree with—about the exploitative aspects of Wilson's filmmaking and whether his camera ridicules his subjects rather than dignifying them. Wilson definitely provokes an awkwardness in his interactions that sets them up as semi-punchlines, but he isn't so condescending; he seems to enjoy actually being among these people because they remind him of himself. I don't know, though, do you folks think there's an aspect of humiliation or cruelty to Wilson's camera?

Madeline: I'm not sure if I would say Wilson's approach is outright humiliating/exploitative, certainly not to the level of Fielder's work at least, but I do think it is very condescending in the way that most documentaries/non-fiction involving subjects who are positioned as 'loveable weirdos' will almost always inevitably be. I don't know if either of you has seen much of Wilson's series, which I watched from the start when it first aired, but the feature-film format underscores some limits to his work in this regard. Seeing his work in a room with a large audience is really interesting because it heightens the sense that the subjects are being used for punchlines first and foremost, and that the genuine curiosity or compassion he may or may not have for them is secondary to the goal of producing a comedy film. I do think the limit of what we might call 'docu-comedy' is that comedy will, in most cases, always be at someone's expense, and that using real people who are unaware that they are in a comedy film is inevitably going to complicate attempts at humanism and compassion (and even outside of the comedy form, the 'humanist' documentary is also very much prone to condescension and exploitation). Wilson is more easily able to evade charges of exploitation than Fielder in this regard for multiple reasons, the most obvious being that Fielder's inspiration is not the humanist documentary film but the more blatantly exploitative form of reality TV.

I always saw debates on whether Nathan For You or The Rehearsal were unethical to be quite silly because both shows more or less make the case for you—we can maybe debate the extent to which they are; they place front and center that Fielder is using his assumed authority as TV presenter to get people to agree to things they otherwise wouldn't do, and to exert an extreme level of control over his subjects. In contrast to Fielder's obsessive and controlling persona, the appeal of Wilson's persona is that he appears to have no idea what he is doing; part of the fun is buying into the illusion that he really is just stumbling into these situations. As a result, the power he has over his subjects is more easily disguised.

While watching, I was thinking about the comic artist Beanytuesday's short essay about 'pro-common man' essays, in which the author goes to report on a niche community or event that they initially position as 'strange' or shallow, only to be surprised by its 'hidden depths' or 'humanity'. Beanytuesday argues that this format is inherently condescending and primarily serves to highlight the 'wisdom' of the author first and foremost. Notably, he suggests that documentary film is a better medium for documenting these communities because it is less egocentric. I'll take the opportunity to challenge his point here: While Wilson's persona leads him to avoid directly stating these positions on his subjects like the essayist might, he absolutely places the viewers in a subject position that invites us to first laugh at the strangeness of his subjects, then be surprised at the depth of emotion they express (this is a formula repeated throughout his series, and very much repeated in The History of Concrete, which is extremely continuous with the form of the show and can be described as a long episode of it.) I would like to think that Wilson does have a genuine level of curiosity and interest in his subjects. However, this formula is inevitably going to be condescending to them, and it limits his goal of being both a comedian and a humanist documentarian.

Ricky: Barton Fink: "I'll show you a life of the mind."

I haven't seen much of the HBO show yet—more his short films (e.g. The Road to Magnasanti and How to Walk to Manhattan), which hone in a little further into his interest with civic infrastructure (with equally tenuous frameworks), and made me ludicrously excited that he was finally fixating on concrete at feature length. I'll dovetail that thought with the response that I think you're right on; the film is clearly at its best when it is apophenetically hysterical and existential about concrete (like Tom Hardy in A24's Locke). I think you've nailed the quagmire of his limits as a humanist when he begins filming actual people like sight gags. Humans of NY, this is not. (Wilson is like a cordial middle ground between his other two friends, Nathan Fielder and Caveh Zavedi.)

On that note, I was struck by the one person he doesn't film at first for laughs: the singer whose voice and apartment have been affected by dust from a neighbouring concrete recycling plant. (Although Wilson perking up after discovering she's a singer—meaning he can meet his benefactor's marketing needs and get the movie funded—is played as a gag; it's not at her expense.) She becomes a transition point for Wilson to finally escalate his fixation on concrete towards a legible political statement. I think the reassurance that he was gesturing towards this point the entire time somewhat helps one return to his 'John Wilson meets/hangs with a new friend' segments a little more convinced of their sincerity.