Film Review: Exit Through The Gift Shop

Street art icon Banksy explores the lines between reality and fantasy in his street art 'documentary' "Exit Through The Gift Shop" now on DVD

A last-second addition to the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, Exit Through The Gift Shop, the directorial debut of British street art icon Banksy is as irreverent and pointed as his best stencil work. After a successful theatrical run earlier this summer, the film finally makes it to DVD courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories. Much of the debate around Exit has rested on the question of authenticity; is what we are viewing one hundred percent authentic or merely another elaborate prank by the mysterious artist, who even in this film, hides his identity courtesy of a hoodie, careful lighting, and digitally altered voice. The question though is unimportant though considering the already tenuous line between reality and artifice in most documentaries already; what matters instead is the story Exit shares with its audience.

Narrated by Rhys Ifans, Exit’s storyline revolves around the life and work of one Thierry Guetta. A French émigré whose LA thrift shop boasted such celebrities as Beck, buying his overhyped and overpriced wares, Thierry is unexpectedly sucked into the very beginnings of the now-ubiquitous street art movement courtesy of his “cousin” Invader. Pasting mosaics featuring Space Invaders creatures around the world, Invader introduces Thierry and more importantly Thierry’s camcorder into this subculture. Never without a camcorder, Thierry records his cousin’s exploits and is introduced to other compatriots involved in the then-underground scene including Swoon and Shepard Fairey.

Fairey becomes the next important link in a chain that will ultimately lead to the movement’s designated icon, Banksy. When questioned by Fairey initially about his intentions with all of the footage, Thierry responds that he is aiming to produce the definitive street art documentary. With his cover established, Thierry follows Fairey around the world as he conducts his urban art campaign, encountering other like souls in Swoon, Ron English, etc. slowly but surely documenting the groundwork of this artistic movement. Yet one man eludes even Thierry’s grasp, the mysterious Banksy.

At this point, Ifans provides a brief rundown on the artist’s exploits thus far. Coming up from Bristol graffiti scene, Banksy first makes headlines with his politically satirical stencils of rats and homosexual policemen around London. Eventually, he causes an international stir in Israel with his controversial mural painted upon the country’s West Bank security wall. Other acts of publically defiant artworks come, culminating in his American debut show Barely Legal, which housed a live elephant amongst its other exhibits. Thierry finally makes his introduction to Banksy after some time and becomes his American liason after proving his mettle during a Disneyland-related installation debacle.

All the while, the film charts the steady commercialization of street art’s leading practitioners as Banksy’s star rises. What were once seen as ironic, political, and often revolutionary objects of expression instead become totems of commercial speculation. As with any other major movement for change, once someone figures out how to earn cash off of it, the overall cultural significance fades dramatically.

Up to this point, Exit feels pretty honest and straight forward; however, the shift comes when Banksy finally calls out Thierry on finishing the documentary. Without ever intending to do so in the first place, the eccentric shopkeeper cuts together a bizarrely random video piece that is almost brilliant in its nonsensicalness. Surprised by Thierry’s mishmash, Banksy decides to take on the footage himself to re-edit and tells Thierry to do his own art show. Already cultivating his own alter-ego “Mr. Brainwash”, Thierry takes up the challenge and sets out to top Banksy’s LA show.

The plotline now entirely focuses around this massive art show, which Thierry sets about hyping without creating any works himself. Instead he settles on tired tropes and clichés from Pop Art to Street Art in a faux-Warholian manner, to flood the giant warehouse he rents with tired imitations of the genuine article. The increasing disorder around the show’s opening and Mr. Brainwash’s incessant interest in self-promotion and price inflation perfectly satires the co-opting of Street Art by the art market as unsuspecting visitors and buyers accept the hype and pricing.

Earlier allies like Banksy and Fairey disavow Thierry’s exploits but watching this hairy, sometimes fumbling Frenchman pull one over on the art world is too enjoyable to pass up. After the film’s world premiere at Sundance, the debate immediately began over the story’s assertions and authenticity. Was this all for real? Was Thierry put on by Banksy to become Mr. Brainwash to satirize the art market’s commercialization of his work? Were the awful Mr. Brainwash paintings instead authentic Banksys? On and on the rumors swirled, but none of them take away the fact that Exit Through The Gift Shop thankfully doesn’t take itself seriously and is more concerned with educating the viewer with fun than providing a solemn treatise on authenticity and capitalism’s neverending struggle against one another.

In its own way, Exit Through The Gift Shop is a much-younger cousin to Orson Welles’ F for Fake; both films question authenticity and authorship in art, both play with illusion and reality, and in the end, whether or not what they espouse is factual is besides the point. Both films enjoyably underscore the difference between truth and facts.

To learn more, go to www.oscilloscope.net and www.banksymovie.com