Film Review: Exit through the Gift Shop
Article published: Tuesday, March 9th 2010
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a documentary or a mock-umentary? I still have no idea how to describe Banksy’s first film, but it was certainly entertaining. The film is also typical of Banksy’s art, witty, subversive and intentionally ambiguous.
The film doesn’t focus on infamous and illusive street-art renegade Banksy but around his number one fan, the compulsive and entirely mental Thierry Guetta. Thierry, a mutton-chopped Frenchman, has spent his life capturing every moment on film. His tapes are stashed away in a cavernous room of towering plastic boxes filled with thousands of un-watched and un-labelled reels. Claiming he is making a documentary, Thierry falls in with the street-art community and cuts his teeth filming big-name artists Shepard Fairey and Invader. Joining them on their late night excursions with gallon tins of paint and extendable ladders he endears himself to the community. Eventually, he sets his sights on a bigger fish and is ecstatic when he gets the opportunity to film Banksy at work.
Banksy maintains his international man of mystery persona, speaking out from an oversized shadowy hood in a distorted, Exorcist of the West-Country voice. Shocked at the amateur documentary that fraudster film-maker Guetta finally produces, Banksy innocently encourages the hare-brained Thierry to leave the footage with him and concentrate on putting on his own art show. Thierry, in megalomaniac style, puts on the most outrageously bombastic rip-off art show ever to grace LA.
The gallery space is literally jam-packed with Banksy, Warhol and Pollock counterfeits. The media is taken in, the hype whipped up to frenzied levels and Thierry, now preferring “Mr Brainwash”, begins to sell, sell, and sell his uninspired artworks for extortionate fees. The arty set that gracefully mill around Mr Brainwash’s exhibition seem accepting of his wholly unoriginal style. They are either so cool, switched on and post-modernly ironic that they play along with the spoof, or are revealed as easily duped, un-critical pawns in the sweaty manipulative palm of the media. The result is both ridiculous and hilarious.
Although the film has been labelled a spoof, it is still peppered with precious footage of street-art heroes at work and exclusive footage of Banksy’s first LA show complete with painted elephant. His famous, risqué Disney Land prank is also shown at close range and spoken about by the artist himself.
The film may be best viewed as a light-hearted documentary that offers genuinely valuable first-hand footage of usually temporary street-art being created. Just don’t expect to leave the cinema with any answers.
Rachel Jackson
Exit Through the Giftshop is out now and showing at Cornerhouse cinema
Running time: 86 mins
UK Certificate: 15
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