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Exit Through the Gift Shop

United Kingdom 2010
Directed by
Banksy
87 minutes
Rated M

Reviewed by
Bernard Hemingway
4 stars

Exit Through The Gift Shop

Synopsis: A documentary about Thierry Guetta and his fifteen minutes of fame.

Exit Through The Gift Shop is one of those documentaries that are blessed by serendipity. Sort of credited to the British street artist known as Banksy, who appears on-screen in deep shadow with a digitally scrambled voice it starts out as a kind of updating of the early '80s graffiti/hip hop documentary, Style Wars (1984) as it tells how Thierry Guetta, a Frenchman living in Los Angeles and making a tidy living from a retro clothing store began videoing street artists in action long before “Street Art” became the art world’s brand new thing. While obsessively filming and claiming to be chronicling the work of these anti-artists for a documentary Guetta gets word of the arrival of the major-domo of street artists – Banksy – and in typical style throws himself at the legendary one’s feet. They get on, Banksy, invites Guetta into his inner circle and Guetta witnesses the huge success of Bansky’s solo show back in LA. Most of this is told via narrator Rhys Ifans and Guetta himself, a rather sweatily hyper individual who looks like John Belushi with mutton-chop whiskers and a pork-pie hat. with occasional input from the cloaked Banksy.

Then the tone shifts. When Banksy asks to see Guetta's documentary. the latter cobbles together from thousands of hours of unedited footage a random collage he calls Life Remote Control. Seeing the fruit of Guetta’s labour, Banksy astutely realizes that the Frenchman has no idea how to make a documentary, possibly that he simply has no idea. To get the irrepressible Guetta out of his face he suggests that the man put down his camera and try pursuing an art career of his own back in LA..

This is where Exit Through the Gift Shop turns a corner and becomes not about street art or Banksy but about Guetta and how a tubby individual with no artistic talent but a mania for self-promotion turned himself into Mr Brain Wash and sucked a million bucks out the pockets of art speculators hoping to cash in on the next big thing. There has been a good deal of debate about whether Exit Through the Gift Shop is one giant hoax perpetrated by Banksy himself with Guetta as his beard. Although Banksy is clearly a fellow with a wicked wit I doubt he could pull off a stunt this big (if it was, Andy Kaufman would have loved it). Since Banksy claims to have wanted to get rid of Guetta, the question of who was filming Guetta during the second part of the film as he turns himself into an overnight sensation remains open.

Notwithstanding, the events depicted seem convincing enough and Guetta one of those characters whose chutzpah is sufficiently outrageous to be taken for the real thing in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Either way, it’s a fun yarn that takes some worthy pot-shots at art as a commodity and you do get to see some genuinely talented people at work.

 

 

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