Banksy - Exit Through the Gift Shop

There are many who will swear this film is 100% truth. However, there are also those who believe it to be a complete farce- concocted by Shepard Fairy (the Obama poster guy) and everyone's favorite guerilla stenciler, Banksy. Regardless of the film's true history, it is a statement about street art and, more importantly, an examination of the true values which motivate it. The film opens in 1999 with Thierry Guetta, a clothing mogul and amateur filmmaker. Guetta is a bumbling, stumbling and nearly incoherent Frenchman who accidentally discovers his cousin's role in the rapidly growing street art community. This chance occurrence sends Guetta on a 10 year, global journey to document prominent members of the fledgling art movement- from its grimy, urban roots on street corners and the sides of buildings, to its rise into galleries, auction houses and the homes of wealthy collectors. The odd, quirky and moving art in the film plays as much of a role as Guetta, Banksy and the other artists. Guetta represents the unknowing public who is forced to view this street art created by individuals who are fueled by cynicism and disgust for the modern, commercial and censored world we live in. And, naturally, he wants to be a part of it. Without giving too much away, 'Exit through the Gift Shop' is first an intimate look into the world of street art and how mainstream consumerism is destroying it- the same way it did coffee houses, acoustic music, and, well, art in general. And then it is one man's odyssey into the street art world. He is overcome by one of the last great outlets of independent social criticism and some of the movement's greatest contributors. Then, he attempts to become one of them and really makes a mess. 'Exit through the Gift Shop' is a documentary in the way that 'Borat' was a documentary. It's farce which forces its viewers to look deeper into the subject. Rhys Ifan provides narration for the film, which only adds to the humor and overall dry wit. In a perfect synthesis, 'Exit' combines great art, a few nail biting and anxiety inducing moments and a clever and hilarious story which is both too far-fetched to be fully believable but also simply be written off as a complete hoax.

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.

It took me a while to get a chance to see this film: anybody who was around Bristol last summer for Banksy's 'Homecoming' exhibition will be aware of the popularity of the city's most celebrated son, and therefore I shouldn't have been surprised that when the first three times I tried to see the film the cinema was sold out. However, I got there in the end.

In my admittedly naïve opinion, street art is one of the most significant art movement of the 21st century. Its attraction lies in the fact that it is one of the most democratic forms of visual art – there is a conscious rejection of the safety net of critical censorship or gallery authority. Instead, the public are engaged with artists' work throughout the course of their daily lives, and it is up to them to conclude which side of the line this kind of work treads – is it graffiti, a public menace and an eyesore, or is it a work of art that has a right to be displayed wherever the artist chooses? I'm rambling. However, I wanted to establish my feelings towards street art as a whole before engaging with Banksy's satirical and humorous representation of it within Exit Through the Gift Shop.

To the film…

Banksy's first foray into film-making drags his unique sweet and sour mix of humour and political satire kicking and screaming onto the silver screen. Anyone hoping for a revelation of his true identity is to be disappointed – the film opens with a blacked-out figure of a man in a hood, and whilst the Bristol accent defies the voice alteration, it's clear that this film is not designed to be a personal unmasking. Rather, Banksy's humour has a very different kind of revelation in mind.

The true hero (or perhaps anti-hero would be a better description) is the curiously care-free French shop-keeper/amateur filmmaker, whose interest in graffiti artists is borne out of a chance confrontation with the artist known as 'Space Invader'. The film follows Guetta's attempts to capture his encounters with various street artists, including the notorious Banksy, on camera, and in the process Banksy encourages Guetta to create a documentary out of the ridiculous amount of film that he has amassed over several years of his life.

Unfortunately, Guetta, although a handy cameraman, is quite clearly not a filmmaker. Part of Banksy's skill in creating this film is that it makes us ask just who is the director in this haphazard process. One of the frequently-quoted lines of the film comes from Banksy himself, saying "it's basically the story of how one man set out to film the un-filmable. And failed." The character of Guetta that we see on screen is simply ridiculous, and yet we are attracted by his attitude of naivety. He is a hugely entertaining personality, and even more so because he appears to take himself so seriously. Even Banksy cannot quite know what to make of him. Is he a disguised genius, or a fool who got lucky? Either way, Banksy's portrayal of the way in which Guetta engages with the art world breathes new life into that clichéd question of what actually gives art both aesthetic and financial value. With the help of Rhys Ifans' superbly wry narration, the film conducts us through the emergence of the street art counterculture, and how perceptions of it have changed within the political, artistic and social establishment.

There are so many things that could be said about this film, but it is dangerous to say more without ruining the sense of the unexpected that the film generates. That is a tribute to the intricacy of the documentary narrative, in which real life personalities generate the same thrill of the unknown as fictional plot lines. Suffice it to say, I left feeling lusciously confused – who was I in the end laughing at or with? In the face of Banksy's teasingly ironic vision, no one is left unscathed. Not even us. Not even Banksy himself.

James Gill Twitter @jg8608 More reviews at http://web.me.com/gilljames/Single_Admission

Exit Through the Gift Shop, the first film directed by reclusive street-art legend Banksy, is a little puzzle-box of a documentary. It's perfectly designed and pitched to be enjoyable on multiple levels: on one as an entertaining, illuminating mini-history of "street art" and on another - one entirely more convoluted and entertaining - as a light-hearted "up yours" to both street artists and their patrons.

Ostensibly (to take the film's word for it) Banksy's film came about when he, as the premiere 21st Century graffiti art darling, was approached by Thierry Guetta, a French-born Los Angeleno. Guetta wanted to make a documentary about street art, and Banksy was the last major figure whose participation he felt he needed, as an affable personality, a love of video cameras and a chance relationship to Invader, a French street-art pioneer who networked with other artists like Shepard Fairey, had left Guetta with hundreds of hours of footage documenting the birth of the art.

After tracking Banksy down and shooting him working, Guetta retired to the cutting room. He emerged months later and showed it to Banksy. He didn't like the film, a couple of minutes of which are excerpted and are plainly terrible, and offered to take over Guetta's doc while Guetta returned to Los Angeles to turn himself into a street art sensation, named "Mr. Brainwash" or MBW. Transforming overnight from an affable, helpful documentarian to a one-man hype-monster artiste, MBW's enormous spraypaint cans, TV monsters and Warhol-style send-ups captured the attention of the LA art crowd, who spent over a million bucks on his stuff, much to the chagrin of Fairey and Banksy. Guetta's film about Banksy changes into Banksy's film about Guetta and street art, and the rise of a new unfortunate talent.

Except, as I and a lot of other folks believe, it's all made up. It's a hoax, it has to be, it's too hilariously perfect to be anything but. Banksy, as a street artist, has seen the perception of his works - by design temporary, and by design defacements - change from graffiti into art that needs preservation, that is cut out from walls and sold. Banksy, in making Exit Through the Gift Shop with Fairey and Guetta has found a way to deface, scrawl over and heap lighthearted disdain all over both himself and the people who snap up his art.

It's spectacular, it's brilliant and all the more so in that it's still a documentary, still a record of events. It's not artificial, not a mockumentary in the way that Spinal Tap is. MBW exists, having been created by Guetta or Banksy or both, and the film documents his arrival. Exactly who it is that arrives is the film's mystery.

Exit Through the Gift Shop captures the birth of a prank, an elaborate, entertaining gotcha that fits perfectly in Banksy's nose-tweaking, politically-aware, cheeky body of work. Moreover, the film doesn't rely on any rug-snapping-out to really work. It works if it's true, it works if it's not, because it's a construction that's above all entertaining. It's a glimpse, anyway, of a world that's built at night, by streetlight, one that's fascinating even if it is in the middle of pulling the wool over our eyes. It's genius, plain and (not so very much at all) simple.