Banksy - Exit Through the Gift Shop

Banksy directs a documentary about Thierry Guetta who immigrated from France in 1999. He opened a trendy vintage clothing shop in L.A. He is constantly filming with his video camera. He discovers his cousin is street artist Space Invader which turns into a more in-depth obsession with other street artists. Invader connects him with Shepard Fairey which leads to other artists. He gets intrigued with the secretive Banksy. He films Banksy and then Banksy turns the camera on him.

There is a fun energy about this. It feels guerrilla secretive outsider work. Then the question becomes whether this is real or fake or semi-real. It colors the movie for me. In the end, this is another form of street art. It doesn't have to follow any demands of a documentary. I took the whole movie with a grain of salt. It doesn't mean it's bad. I just wish this is a more definitive solid movie about Banksy.

Exit Through the Gift Shop is credited as "a film by Banksy", who is a notorious and perhaps the most popular and widely acclaimed (and the premiere provocateur) in the group of street artists from the past several years. Yet his credit as director is something of a lark; he's never directed before, and he claims at the end of the film that this will be the last time he helps someone make a documentary on street artists. The bulk of the footage shot was by another artist (or some would say 'so-called'), Theirry Guetta, a former clothing store owner who used to take super-cheap and mis-made clothes and sell them for rocket-high prices as if they were designer wear, who started taping everything one day, just whatever was around him. Then, when his cousin, nicknamed 'Space Invader', took him around to show him how he put up his stenciled artwork around town, Thierry became enamored and followed anyone who would let him around town with his camera.

Soon, a documentary was looking like it was taking shape, but was it really? At one point, after years of filming and amassing such a large collection that it would make all OCD-ers cringe, he did try and make a documentary out of it called 'LIFE REMOTE CONTROL - THE MOVIE', which Banksy, upon watching it, didn't really know what to say, since he hated it and couldn't really put it in words. Thierry wasn't a filmmaker, and he wasn't an artist, but he went after doing both anyway, and it's him that Banksy makes the focus of, taking his masses of footage- most of it on street artists who remain anonymous (only a few, like Shepard Fairey who made the red and blue Obama poster so iconic, go unblurred on camera)- and telling this story of this... kind of nutty guy, and how somehow, by his determination and, indeed, some mental imbalance, he became "Mr. Brain-Wash", a self-created art phenomenon that is basically a huge collection of Andy Warhol rip-off screen prints of celebrities (how huge you might ask? Well, there's a reason I kept thinking of Howard Hughes during the film, and a Spruce Goose comparison isn't far off).

Banksy says at the start he didn't want Thierry doing a documentary on him since he didn't think he was very interesting, and turned the camera on his original documentarian instead. I wonder though how much of this is really true, or perhaps just part of Banksy's own mystique; the guy is like The Shadow of street artists, with a touch of Tyler Durden. He pops up, does his thing, and leaves, trying to get by with his "gray-legal-area" artwork in Britain and elsewhere, and making waves with his real provocative pieces (i.e. the art on the Palestine wall, and especially the stunt at Disneyland, which is one of the most fascinating parts of the film). He remains a shadow unto himself on screen, becoming like one of his stencils in a silhouette form and a voice muffled by distortion. But then again, he knows that he can only be so self-indulgent - how can he keep up, for example, with a guy like Thierry Guetta.

He is the real star of the film, and he really is one of a kind, a genuinely interesting "character" who sometimes, ala Howard Hughes, repeats things a bit too much, and like Michael Scott on the Office can seem to put himself in some awkward positions. He's also good in a crunch (such as the Disneyland incident), and his very first piece of art- his own self-portrait as a guy with shaggy hair and a hat and a camera- was put all over town by himself and it's a genuinely good piece. And his how he relates to others if interesting too; he takes some really long stretches of time from his family, and those he documents like Shepard Fairey don't know whether he's a genuinely good guy or just wacko, or both in a single bound. Certainly when he is finally let loose, by way of a gentle suggestion by Banksy, to create his own art it becomes like pushing a river-boat over a mountain: something huge that should be impossible, but there it is, and WTF?

The reaction to his art, and how people see it in the film (frankly I never heard of the guy, unlike Banksy, though I'm assuming he's a big deal in elite art circles), is mixed really. A guy who just pours out hundreds of pieces of art and paintings right away instead of taking years for the craft? What separates him from Banksy, and it's most likely what makes this such a great documentary, is the method of hype. That really is what is the hook here (I can imagine this being a fantastic double feature, by the way, with My Kid Could Paint That), that this guy ended up being such a sensation by pimping himself out there, getting on the cover of a magazine, without building up street cred (forgive the pun) that most of the artists shown here need to get. As Banksy notes, there are no real rules in art, though MBW probably did break them... which he can't really condemn nor condone exactly. He is what he is, and his big bushy sideburns lead up to passionate eyes and a sense of life and art that is... um, influenced?

This is the only documentary you need to see on street art, if there even are any others. Perhaps Banksy means for this to be *the* statement on it and leave it at that. It kept me contemplating long after it was over, and I'm sure to revisit it many times. That I have only a minimal interest in street art should go without saying; Guetta, Banksy, and everyone else make this a must-see.

Like the very nature of the underground street art movement "Exit Through the Gift Shop" feels fresh and almost subversive. It doesn't matter to me if it is a conceptualized mockumentary, or a genuine attempt to record the outsider reality experienced by brilliant street artists like Shepard Fairey, Invader, and the infamous Banksy. "Exit Through The Gift Shop" is mischievous and immediate in the same way that street art is.

Mainly we watch the evolution of Thierry Guetta from an obsessive-compulsive videographer to a successful popular artist whose street credibility is quickly parlayed into the show of shows. Guetta takes contemporary icons and gives them Warholian emphasis, so we see a reinvention of Madonna, who once reinvented herself in a Marilyn-like way, and who we later learn commissions Mister Brainwash (Guetta) to design her cover art. Guetta's point-of-view is absolutely authentic in the way it synthesizes and skewers popular culture. Or is it Banksy's point-of-view? It doesn't matter. It's brilliant, provocative, charming, and completely entertaining.

An experience will ultimately become a diluted memory, unless the experience itself is documented in image or film, in which case it will last forever (or until it is deleted/destroyed...). 'Exit Through The Gift Shop' is a brilliant examination of the underground street art culture, and a poignant look at man's obsession with a culture he is increasingly drawn into throughout his life.

Thierry Guetta (pronounced Te-ree), is a French immigrant living Los Angeles with his loving wife and children and a good honest job, but there is one object he will never leave the house without; his video camera. Guetta has been enticed into the everyday cinema verité movement of simply recording any, and everything that goes on in his life. From playing with his children, to his ultimate attraction of following other street artists around and documenting their work, Guetta loves to watch, document and admire from behind the lens. Guetta eventually earns the trust and respect of various artists around the globe including the elusive Banksy, his cousin Space Invader and Shepard Fairey, and provides the audience with an up close and personal view of a culture (or industry) which has been projected into the limelight over the past five years.

Narrated by Rhys Ifans, 'Exit' has been acknowledged as not having a registered director, instead it is a smoothly edited combination of Guetta's extensive and various filmed sequences from over the years (the film shows his EXTENSIVE physical collection of tapes from more than decade of film-making) and interviews with various leading figures in the industry. For example Banksy is interviewed at length over his involvement with Guetta and comes across as a very down-to-earth, humble and at times, incredibly funny person. While everybody, including Guetta, are extremely brazen and don't hold back when speaking about each other, their profession or how the street art culture has developed over time into a somewhat monopolistic environment (which can be viewed by the fact that the rich and famous turned out in droves for Banksy's first exhibition in the United States).

This isn't a film about 'graffiti' though, as some may simply see it as on the surface, aside from the exploration of a fast growing community it is also a deep, scary and heart-warming look at Thierry Guetta's life over a decade onwards as he constantly leaves behind his family and his job to follow various artists around the globe. Mentally unstable, or one of the greatest French minds of the last twenty years, nobody is quite sure what Thierry Guetta (also known as Mr Brainwash) is, but what everybody does acknowledge is that he is a man with a passion and while he may not follow the same ideology as everybody else, his heart is still in the right place. 'Exit Through The Gift Shop' is a fascinating documentary focusing on a rising culture that many people may not have much knowledge about, except for knowing the name of the elusive, and as I have mentioned, surprisingly hilarious Banksy.

How is it until now I'd never seen this gem of a movie? The film is directed by notorious, and equally mysterious English street artist, Banksy. It uses many, many pieces of stock footage from a French shop keeper named Thierry Guetta (A man who would later be known as Mr. Brainwash), who follows many street artists all over the world, capturing their art on film before it is taken down. He soon comes across the man himself, capturing his art, and even attempts to make a documentary centered around the art, and the artists (Even though he has never made a film before). But Banksy decides to turn the tables, and instead focuses his own documentary on the life of Guetta. Why? As Banksy himself puts it, "He's a more interesting person than I am." An inspired decision on his part. Theirry Guetta really is a fascinating person, a man obsessed with taking a video camera everywhere he goes, and capturing these artists at work, having strong senses of passion for both. He is also a witty person, sometimes the things he says feel a little too odd to be true, but believe it. The film's portrait of the man is rather eccentric, and energetic.

A lot of this is to the credit of film editors Tom Fulford, and Chris King, whose editing and pacing is pitch perfect, always leaving proper delivery for some rather humorous things to occur, and never straying away from giving the world of art its own adequate time in the spotlight. The film really is a thought provoker, sometimes the life of the man can make you question "Is this for real?" I guess the whole film is really summed up by one phrase: "Time will tell whether I'm a rabbit, or a turtle." Sounds silly now, but once you hear it, the gears in your head start right up. It's a passionately crafted movie of a man with nothing but passion for what he does.

Exit Through the Gift Shop is a diamond in the rough, one that I give **** out of ****