Exit Through the Gift Shop

In theaters Friday: Cedar Rapids [limited], Gnomeo & Juliet, The Eagle

New on DVD/Blu-ray: I Spit on Your Grave, It’s Kind of a Funny Story, Life as We Know It, Paranormal Activity 2

Billed as the world’s first street art disaster movie, Exit Through the Gift Shop at once promises some new morsel of insight into famed English street artist Banksy and a complex narrative dissecting our modern culture of consumerism and the evolving concepts of art and identity. It’s a lot of fun, too, in an unpredictable thrill ride sort of way that showcases adrenaline-laced clips of street artists in action and on the run. It also beat out frontrunners like the heart-tugging Waiting for Superman and Last Train Home to nab an Academy Award nomination for best Documentary Feature. From the title forward, the implication is that we are being had, but whether Exit is 100% real or not, it remains a fascinating look at what may ought to be seen as the defining art of the last decade.

Aided by the instant dissemination and acclaim afforded by the Internet, street graffiti bloomed in the early 2000s from an underground act of anti-establishment rebellion into a worldwide cultural phenomenon and a financially viable and critically acclaimed artistic movement. At the top of the hierarchy sits Banksy, an emperor with so many clothes that his true identity and whereabouts remain shrouded in mystery—even as many speculate he is in fact a 36-year-old from Bristol named Robin Gunningham. No matter. He’s Batman now, and his anonymity and brand have become a mega-seller and a startling, socially conscious newsmaker. His art stirs conversations as much as it turns heads. Some of Banksy’s more infamous stunts include displaying an inflatable Guantanamo Bay prisoner doll at Disneyland, tagging Israel’s West Bank wall and mounting his own version of the Mona Lisa—complete with a yellow smiley face—in the galleries of the Louvre, all while eluding authorities and security cameras.

Exit follows a curiously adrift French shop owner named Thierry Guetta who has an obsession with filming practically every mundane detail of his life. After tagging along with his cousin, a street artist by the name Space Invader and meeting other underground artists, Guetta decides to create the ultimate insider’s documentary about street art. Guetta gets a helping hand from L.A.-based “Obey” creator Shepard Fairey—you know him from the famous red and blue Obama image—but feels his movie is not complete without footage of the legendary Banksy. Through Fairey, Guetta meets Banksy who agrees to be in the film as long as his identity is not revealed and his face is not shown on camera. Guetta agrees and gets one-of-a-kind footage of the mysterious Banksy at work.

Things take a left turn when Banksy suggests that Guetta cannot really understand street art and thus complete his film until he attempts to make some art of his own. Guetta takes this suggestion as a serious challenge and essentially swaps roles with Banksy. Guetta leaves his raw footage for Banksy to edit together in England and returns to L.A. to relaunch himself as Mr. Brainwash. But can Guetta simply regurgitate the art he has documented for so many years, or is the snake eating its own tail? With limited talent but a lot of promotion and hype Mr. Brainwash’s debut show is a remarkable success to Banksy’s utter disbelief, if not that of the hundreds who lined up around the block to be the first to see his work.

“Warhol repeated iconic images until they became meaningless, but there was still something iconic about them,” Banksy, his hooded face in shadow and his voice manipulated, says in the film. “Thierry really makes them meaningless.”

Street art of the Banksy order is a call to action, to contemplation, an anti-corporate crusade to reclaim public spaces from advertisers. We do not choose the advertising we are exposed to, so if there is a blank wall somewhere, why can’t artists use that to create something thought-provoking or beautiful? This is Banksy’s grand thesis. But what happens when street art becomes overtly commercial? This is the route so many younger artists inspired by Banksy have taken. These kinds of artists are in Baton Rouge, even. Maybe Exit is Banksy’s way of giving the finger to those supposed acolytes, a film to show them how comically wrong they’ve taken his ideas and how funny it is that we, the consumer public, are buying into this misinterpretation to the tune of millions of dollars.

We may not know much about Banksy, but Exit tells us one thing for sure. The artist has a killer sense of humor. “I used to encourage everyone I knew to make art,” Banksy says, feeling regretful that he helped inspire Mr. Brainwash. “I don’t do that so much anymore.” And then the end credits are not a big reveal, but a puff of smoke. Banksy wins again.