Star Rating: ****
Banksy’s documentary film "Exit Through the Gift Shop" is a fine documentary, very intriguing, and a good experience. If you’re an artist, even if you aren’t a street artist, it should appeal enormously to your artistic side.
Street art—a form of graffiti where artists create artwork on street signs, or posters, or if artists make art and hang it on bridges or walls of buildings. Due to internet exposure, many pieces of street art have been seen by a much wider audience. "Exit Through the Gift Shop" says that street art is possibly the most counter-cultural movement since punk.
Some of the street art is quite impressive. For example, beneath a bench one street artist painted the bench’s shadow on the sidewalk. The shadow is obviously fake, but nonetheless impressive. Throughout the film, we are introduced to some truly passionate artists. I felt myself drinking in their artistic passion and creative freedom, and thinking what a pity it is that all this talent is going into something illegal. It was very amusing how Banksy belittled the illegality of his profession by describing street art as “being in sort of a legal gray area.”
"Exit Through the Gift Shop" (2010) was directed by Banksy, an English graffiti artist. As Banksy put it, the film was about Thierry Guetta, who tried to make a documentary about Banksy. In the end, any film that being made winded up being about Thierry. In a title card at during the end credits, it said that Banksy would never again help anyone make a documentary about street art.
Thierry Guetta is a French immigrant living in Los Angeles, who has a knack for filming. Every day, Thierry carries a camera around with him wherever he goes and films almost everything he sees. While on vacation in France, Thierry visits his cousin Space Invader, who is a world famous street artist.
Invader’s apartment is decorated with his artwork—paintings of Jolly Rodgers and of a movie poster of The Shining. Thierry got to know a group of Invader’s friends, and he would follow them around filming them as they made their street art. He claims he’s making a documentary about street artists, but he is really working on no such project. He’s just filming.
Thierry has a few levels to his characters that I can see. The first is his passion for his work. He’s obviously got an appreciation for street art, and he’s definitely got a passion for filming, and then for street art itself. Thierry films everything because of his fear of life passing by him without his being able to capture it, a complex that originated with the unexpected death of his mother when he was a child. Throughout his career, Thierry walks around filming street artists at work, many of whom say they don’t want to be filmed. Thierry is so determined to document everything he can about street art, and he finds a way to film the reluctant artists anyways.
This is another level of Thierry’s character. To get to the passion, you have to pass an exterior layer of immense disrespect. Thierry is filming people against their will, people who are breaking the law no less. Thierry is always filming people who are breaking the law, since street art is basically vandalism, which is definitely illegal. Street artist Shepard Fairey described Thierry, saying. He said: “I don’t whether it’s just that he’s passionate, or whether it’s that he’s passionate and he’s crazy, but I respect passion.”
Thierry and street artist Banksy become close friends. Banksy puts on an art show comprised of street art called Barely Legal, which to his surprise is a massive success. Banksy encourages Thierry to complete his documentary on street art. This is the documentary that Thierry isn’t making, but Thierry goes through all the footage of street art he’s captured over the years and edits it all down to a 90 minute film called Life "Remote Control". Banksy declares that the film is unwatchable, and the result of someone who isn’t necessarily a filmmaker, but someone with mental problems who just happens to have a camera. This film is an unwatchable assemblage of random footage of street artists shot over the years that went on for an hour and a half.
Banksy recognized the value in the footage itself though, and realizes he could re-edit it into a film about himself. He wanted Thierry out of the way in order to do it, and suggested that Thierry put on an art show of his own to keep him occupied. Banksy didn’t seem to grasp how seriously Thierry took everything that came out of his mouth. Thierry began making his own street art and created his own alter-ego: Mr. Brainwash. He opened a big studio, and cranked out artwork after artwork and set up his own art show called "Life is Beautiful". Despite the poor organization of the show, "Life is Beautiful" was a huge success. Thierry’s artwork sold like hot cakes, and Thierry went from oddball filmmaker to Mr. Brainwash the street artist over night. After Thierry Guetta became Mr. Brainwash, none of the other street artists would have touched him with a fifty foot pole.
It’s intriguing to watch the high level of competition between these artists, who went from liking Thierry, to doubting him, to completely resenting him. Banksy said all Thierry did as “Mr. Brainwash” was take iconic images and make them meaningless. The resentment is understandable, though. Artists like Banksy and Fairey worked hard at what they do and became masters of their craft overtime. And then here comes Thierry, with whom they had their foibles with from the beginning, nearly besting without really even trying. On the other hand, it’s not fair to assume all Thierry did was steal ideas. The passion was obviously there, so why shouldn’t Thierry make his own art?
Some of the most entertaining parts of "Exit Through the Gift Shop" are in Banksy’s commentary. Much of it is laced with very dry humor, and is ironically humorous. In describing his reaction to "Life Remote Control", he said: “I told him I hadn't seen anything like it, and I wasn't lying about that. I was faced with that terrible thing when someone shows you their work, and everything about it is shit, so you don’t really know where to start.” And later, when describing his feelings about Mr. Brainwash’s success, Banksy said: “I always used to encourage everyone I met to make art; I used to think everyone should do it. I don’t really do that so much anymore.” The humors not so much in what he’s saying, as in how he’s saying it.
Still, for all his resentment of Thierry, or Mr. Brainwash, Banksy still made a movie about him. There have been a few speculations that film is a hoax. The one thing I wonder about is how Thierry agreed to sit for a film where he is ultimately depicted as a fool. Or was the footage perhaps taken without his consent and edited into the final film, as Thierry had so often done?
I don’t have enough data to make an informed opinion on the film’s authenticity. I will say that whether it’s really or not, "Exit Through the Gift Shop" is a wildly entertaining and thought provoking film about art and the world it is born into.
During the opening credits of Exit "Through the Gift Shop", there are shots of multiple artists making street art, shaking up paint cans and mixing paint while Richard Hawley’s "Tonight the Streets Are Ours plays". The song talks about letting yourself go and letting nobody and nothing bind you. These are the feelings that art should evoke in any artist. The marriage of this song with these images not only sets the stage for the story of street art, and romanticizes breaking the law, but it also appeals enormously to my artistic side. This whole film is about how art is for everybody, even though it may shine through some more than others.
I’m not saying for one minute that the streets are actually at our disposal, but think of the opening scene as a metaphor and look at it that way. To everybody, to all artists everywhere—the streets are yours.
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