The Banksy Movie
26th January, 2010
I was told before I even set foot in Park City that Sundance always saves one movie as a secret. On the program, they call it the “Spotlight Surprise.” This year, it was a documentary film by the street artist Banksy, called “Exit Through the Gift Shop.” Reports of Banksy graffiti around Park City floated around. When I spotted my first Banksy on an errant wall off Main Street, I snapped a photo like everyone else. But I felt jaded. After all, how different was this from those Hollywood “guerrilla marketing” campaigns?
Sundance is fun because there aren’t any publicity campaigns telling you what to do, there aren’t critics telling you what to think. You go and you watch. If you don’t like it, you can leave. (And people do.) So I didn’t know what to expect with the Banksy film, but the hype surrounding him in recent years made me skeptical. Hadn’t he sold out?
“Exit Through the Gift Shop” is about a French man living in Los Angeles named Thierry Guetta. He owns a thrift store, has massive sideburns and a paunch, and is obsessed with documenting his life with a video camera. There is no explanation for what he films. There are shots of the toilet being flushed, of him taking a bath with his children. His wife, exasperated, accepts it. His friends learn to ignore the camera. It’s not until Guetta starts filming his cousin, the street artist named Space Invader, that he finds his calling.
Guetta starts telling people he is making a documentary about street art. And through his cousin’s network, he gets access to all kinds of street artists, each with names more awesome than the next: Monsier Andre, Zeus, Shepard Fairey, Swoon, Neckface, Dotmasters, Borf, Buffmonster. These artists agree to let themselves be filmed, despite the fact that what they do is illegal. “Street art has a short life span,” Banksy says at one point. “It needed to be documented. It needed someone who could use a camera.” (Btw–forget any chance of learning Banksy’s identity. He appears in a dark corner, with a black hoodie obscuring his face; his voice is modified.) One of the best things about the movie is the amazing footage Guetta logged: a breathtaking shot of an artist wheat-pasting in the middle of the night from the top of an enormous building; a slap-stick moment of Shepard Fairey on a ladder, pasting up an Obey poster in front of a couple of oblivious cops in broad daylight. It’s funny, daring, and beautiful to watch.
Only one street artist eludes Guetta: Banksy. And Guetta loves Banksy. Like, really, really, really loves him: “He was–He is–He was,” Guetta gushes at one point. “I really like him.” He will do anything to meet Banksy, anything to have the opportunity to film him doing his work.
How Guetta meets Banksy, and how Guetta leverages his connection to Banksy into an enormous art show in downtown Los Angeles with a Warhol-like factory employing dozens of minions, raking in over a million dollars–well, I’ll leave that to the film to explain.
But I will say this: I don’t think Banksy sold out. The film, in a brilliant way, salvages his reputation. Banksy, in casually taking us step by step through Guetta’s journey, slowly pulls the focus of the camera away from himself and onto Guetta and the art world. And Guetta, in emulating Banksy and cashing in on the street art craze, ultimately embodies everything that is rotten about the art industry.
As Nigel says in Spinal Tap, “This one goes to eleven.”
