Exit Through the Gift Shop is a interesting documentary about the street art movement. The director is credited as Banksy. He is probably the best known street artist around the wall. His works have appeared at the London Zoo, Disney World, the Israeli West Bank Wall, and he has personally snuck in paintings into several prestigious museums and hung them on the wall. He generally works with stencils, but has expanded into other mediums.
My favorite parts of this movie are when it is talking about and showing all the different street artists like Bansky, Space Invader and Shepard Fairey (the man who designed the famous Obama "CHANGE" poster).
This doc is presented in a very strange way. It is told through the tapes of a potentially crazy man who is obsessed with taping every minute of his life. Through a distant family member he meets Space Invader in France. The two forge a friendship and Invader begins allowing this man, Thierry Guetta, to tape him and even assist him with his art work. Thierry later gets introduced to all the other street artists.
The last one he meets is Banksy. The two hit it off right away and soon Thierry is sort of Banksy's right hand man. One of the tricks of the film is that all these street artists think that Thierry is collecting footage in order to make the worlds first documentary on street art. The truth is that Thierry has no intentions of doing anything with the tapes. He is simply compelled to tape things.
The final act of this film, and it's most controversial, is when Thierry decided to become a street artist himself despite a lack of any real vision or talent. He kind of just copies all the different works that he has been watching all these other artists create for the past few years. Thierry then changes his name to Mr. Brainwash and becomes a huge hit around the LA art scene. His art work starts selling for thousands of dollars.
The reason it is so controversial is that people begin to wonder if Mr Brainwash is basically a creation of Banksy and possibly the entire film is a work of street art. I love this concept. This film really makes you ask the question "What is art"?
The film is quite funny too. Banksy is only seen with his face blacked out and voice modified. In real life no one know what he looks like. Banksy and his comments about Thierry had me laughing out loud. It made me wish Banksy would reveal himself and become a more public personality.
There are a few clunky moments in the film, but overall it is very well paced with enough going on to keep you interested for the entire run time. I highly recommend this picture and would love to hear what others think about it. There is a great line at the end of the movie by one of the talking heads in it. He says "I guess the joke is on........I don't know who the joke is on". In a way that perfectly sums up the entire films and my feeling about it. I give Exit Through the Gift Shop a 4.5/5 stars. Check out the Trailer Park to see for yourself.
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