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Banksy’s “Exit Through the Gift Shop” is as much a documentary about street artists as it is about the creative process and the art world (and always about Banksy himself, a master at self marketing). Currently screening at the 60th Berlinale, Banksy himself, of course, was nowhere to be seen (officially), but the film has become an audience favourite.
Street art as a phenomenon and an art form is elusive. It is immediate – you glimpse it on the side of a building on your way to work or to the supermarket. It is also temporary – that same wall will be painted over a few days later. It is direct - a sharp, clear message conveyed in ironic, subversive stencils or sprayed messages. But it’s also become controversial, being sold at art auctions and losing some of the street credibility that made it so meaningful in the first place. It used to be elusive - as much about the temporary staging as well as the artwork itself, but through iPhones and the internet it’s been preserved for the ages. And overall - is it actually art? An expression of civil disobedience, a meaningful critique of the state of the world in a clever, ironic way? Or is it mere vandalism, defacing public property and causing an uproar from Disneyland to the West Bank? And who the hell IS this Banksy? That last question won't be answered, but let’s begin at the beginning, as does the film. Billed as the first (failed) docu about street artists, the story about the making of “Exit Through a Gift Shop”, covered in the first half, is as interesting as anything in the film itself. We begin with Thierry Guetta, a Frenchman living in LA and operating a successful designer clothes store (his inventivenes at selling ill-sown clothes as “designer” ware foreshadowing his story explored in the second half of the film). He's successful, making money, raising a family. But aside from selling clothes, he is obsessed with filming, filming, filming. Everything, anyone, anytime. Everything has to be recorded – from his morning routine to his kids growing up. Lugging his camera to a family retreat in France, his meeting with a cousin of his proves to be fateful.
The cousin; Invader. One of the first globally known street artists, making mosaics out of Space Invader characters he plasters all over the globe. He opens up a world to Guetta he finds irresistible and feels compelled to record, introducing him to fellow street artists producing their art work on the wrong side of the law. The footage Guetta takes is thrilling, as the artists are notoriously shy and unwilling to let anyone else into their community due to the questionable legality of their art. But Guetta knows exactly what they want: to have their, by definition, temporary art recorded for the ages, an interesting exploration into the nature of street art and art overall. So he pretends to be filming a documentary about street art which opens a lot of doors for him. And he does manage to capture an exciting subculture, following the artists on nightly excursions that are a mix of creating meaningful street art and evading the police. But as he gets progressively obsessed with recording the community, he sets his eyes on meeting the biggest and most elusive street artist of them all: Banksy. Thierry becomes obsessed with meeting the one no one can meet and, through chance developments, actually manages to, striking up a friendship with the reclusive artist. But this is where the proposed documentary hits a roadblock. Guetta never had any intention of turning the hundreds of hours of video footage into an actual film (shown in a chilling scene where he films boxes upon boxes filled with tapes, tapes, hundreds of tapes. Never to be watched, most of which aren’t even labelled). His amateurish attempt to randomly edit them into a film to please Banksy results in a “90-minute nightmare trailer”. A true testament to a failed film project that was never meant to be.
So, in the second half of “Exit Through the Gift Shop”, Banksy turns the camera on Guetta himself, reversing their roles, morphing from subject to manipulator/director. Telling Guetta to create street art himself and stage a little art show to get him off his back while trying to salvage the footage into a workable docu launches the second half of the film that is the true heart of the documentary. Here, we follow Guetta, who becomes as obsessed with turning himself into a street artist as he was about filming. Within months, he's re-inveted himself, preparing to stage a big art show in LA to follow in his idol’s footsteps - with unforeseeable results. It is difficult to convey the fascination of the street art world caught on film; the clandestine trips to spray-paint billboards or leave installations on street corners in broad daylight while always trying to evade the law. It is downright impossible to capture the character of Guetta who, as Banksy himself says, is a sheer force of nature filled with unbridled enthusiasm for whatever he sets his eyes on. At times amusing, yet frustrating; insightful, yet totally oblivious, his journey in the second part of the film is one of the best examinations of the creative process and the absurdity of the art market put on film to date. The overall narrative running through the documentary and connecting both parts is the move street art underwent from an underground, illegal expression of civil disobedience, to staging big art shows and having serious art collectors paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to hang a Banksy next to their Picasso. We go from running away from the police to an auction at Sotheby’s. We go from temporary, message driven, ironic commentaries on the state of the world to Warholian meaninglessness of the same artwork due to it hanging on some collector’s wall. A process that took years in real life, but is sped up in Guetta’s case who skips the street cred and goes right to staging a huge art show at the end of the film as his re-imaged alter ego, Mr. Brainwash. He becomes the personification of that process, the prototype for street artists all over the world who have found success with the “serious” art critics and buyers. A baffling story, unmasking the utter randomness and hypocrisy of that world, caught on tape in a thrilling, funny and insightful film. It's satire while also true to life in the way best satires are. And the best part (and my pet theory) is - there’s always the titillating possibility that Mr. Brainwash is none other than Banksy himself, or at least a purely fictional creation of Banksy, playing yet another trick on us all. |
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