Exit Through the Gift Shop – 5 stars
Banksy has a weird relationship with fame. Let’s call it the ‘reverse Lohan’: he’s famous for not being famous. He breeds celebrity then rejects it. His anonymity is a handy tease – a tool that allows him to draw attention to himself while at the same time deflecting it. This is the spirit of Exit Through the Gift Shop. It profiles Banksy and prods at issues raised by his success, from originality to commercialisation. But it’s a wonky, sideways profile in that the film pretends not to be about Banksy.
He – or whoever made the film – employs a fall guy to make himself look good. It’s passive self-promotion. Some even say it’s a hoax. Part of the problem is that we expect a Banksy project to be a joke on us. Whatever the film is, it’s sparky and funny and invigorating to watch.
The fall guy – Banksy’s mirror – is Thierry Guetta, a hipster French exile in Los Angeles introduced to us from the beginning as obsessed with video cameras and looking for an outlet for a creeping early middle-aged ennui. Essentially the film has two narrators: Rhys Ifans, buoying the story along in voiceover, and Banksy, who pops up occasionally in silhouette to offer commentary in a distorted Bristolian burr. Both lend their voice to a mass of archive footage, much of it shot by Guetta, who, we’re told, started filming his cousin Invader (a French street artist who plasters mosaics) in the late 90s and moved on to other artists, including Shepard Fairey and Banksy.
We’re told that after many years of filming these artists on roofs, at night or in their studios, Guetta edited his footage into a mess called Life Remote Control. Which is where Banksy decided to take over and turn the archive into something watchable. Which is where we join the party.
The cheeky twist in the tale is that Guetta, encouraged by Banksy, then becomes an artist too. He exhibits and sells work at a hyped-up Los Angeles show, and all the signs are that Banksy is closer to this late creative flowering than he admits. Most of Guetta’s works look like D-grade Banksy rip-offs and there’s a sense that there’s a smart mind behind this ‘bad’ work, which includes a giant aerosol can labelled with branding for ‘Campbell’s Tomato Spray’.
So, whether Guetta’s burgeoning art career is under the patronage or direction of Banksy – or both – is the question you must take away. Whatever the answer, the film is a rousing tribute to street art, a crafty autobiography and a cheeky comment on the bravado of artists, talented or otherwise, and the gullibility of their punters – us included.
Dave Calhoun, Time Out
Exit Through the Gift Shop screens at the Sydney Film Festival, 2 & 7 June. Time Out Sydney’s exclusive Banksy issue, which features a rare interview and specially commissioned cover hits newsstands today.
