Cinema Review: "Exit Through The Gift Shop," a Banksy film.

by Marcel Reyes

Image used is the Mister Brainwash Madonna piece that was used as cover art for her Celebration greatest hits collection.

Though ostensibly to be about the work of Banksy and street art at large, "Exit Through The Gift Shop" is a film about fanatic emulation, obsession, and deconstruction. Very funny, and at times offensive to artists and art scholars, it makes a sharp incision into the contextualization of contemporary art. The film is mainly about the life and work of Thierry (pronounced Terry) Guetta, a floater of sorts whose deep emptiness due to tragic loss and general alienation causes him to latch on to whatever has the strongest flavor nearby. In this case, Thierry is immersed in the world of street artists, who take to his gung-ho enthusiasm and his knack for recording everything on camcorder (evolving into a fabrication in which Thierry is gathering material for a first-of-its-kind documentary about street art).

From under the wing of one street artist (Space Invader) to another (Shepard Fairey), he is passed through the impenetrable circles of these artists as a quirky fluke who just might be a genius (that unfortunately later gets pinned as a "retard"), until he enters the auspices of the Street Art prince Banksy. This is also the story of a person becoming a person. In an explosive, and extreme manner of claiming a selfhood, Thierry, through Banksy's flippant encouragement, "ascends" to become Mister Brainwash, a street artist in his own right, much to the chagrin of his former, disillusioned masters. Mister Brainwash is the manifestation of the sprout of intellectual interest bred by his firsthand exposure to artistic geniuses and their creative process, but grown in a sac of Miracle Gro -- premature, unresolved, and truly, unexplored and unfocused. His precipitous climb as MBW is cringeworthy and yet uncanny, both elating and disappointing. But what it ultimately illustrates is a jaded art community, and a music-video soaked art industry in which relativism and nihilism has destroyed taste.

Bittersweet, triumphant in a subversive way, and ultimately provocative about the subjective nature of hype, of the identification of being an artist, and the artistic process... this film is, amidst the jocular overtones, an important exposition of the art world's hunger for the newest urban trends, its fickle nihilistic taste, and ultimately ...lack of taste.

Exit Through The Gift Shop website [] Banksy [] Mr. Brainwash

I saw this film at Landmark Theatres Hillcrest Cinemas, and earned a secret Banksy Badge on Foursquare.