Art For Our Sake

Exit Through the Gift Shop

**** out of ****

Directed by: Banksy

Starring: Banksy, Thierry Guetta, Shepard Fairey and Rhys Ifans

Running time: 87 minutes

It was pop artist Andy Warhol who prophesied that, “In the future, everybody will be world famous for 15 minutes.”

And it is Bansky, a notorious guerilla art phantom that - like Warhol before him - forays into film to deliver a fascinating look into the psyche of celebrity and the underground world of street art.

His debut, Exit Through the Gift Shop, may be a thought-provoking, howlingly funny and thrillingly original documentary. It also may not be a non-fiction feature at all.

Since it debuted at Sundance, critics and audiences have questioned if the events in Gift Shop have any validity, and if sections are purposefully fake to coincide with the challenging questions Banksy – a modern art auteur if there ever was one – throws at us.

(I will refrain from delving too far into the details surrounding the claims that the film is contrived and manipulative – there’s no point in spoiling the pleasures for you folks.)

Gift Shop is a film about a documentarian, and one that's hard to forget: an unabashed French shop keeper named Thierry Guetta. He bumbles his English like Inspector Clouseau and a decade must have passed since his barber trimmed his sideburns.

Guetta discovers that his cousin is a rising street artist in Los Angeles. Street art is a term given to artworks that are placed in public spaces, and range from traditional graffiti to stencil art to wheatpasting.

His cousin specializes in pasting mosaic tiles of characters based on those from the video game Space Invaders, and the young artist begins to dub himself as “Invader.”

Captivated by his cousin’s entrance into an exciting new genre of modern art, Guetta begins to follow Invader around and record the genesis of his guerilla-art career during late-night missions across Los Angeles. The results of these adventures fill box after box of tape, and it’s not long until Guetta should just have his camcorder surgically attached to his hand.

The danger of recording this movement excites Guetta, and the eager videographer decides to expand his focus. Like a paparazzo, albeit an incredibly loyal one, Guetta begins filming other successful street artists, such as Shepard Fairey (notable for his ubiquitous “Hope” poster for the Obama campaign).

With his camera being the sole eye capturing the spray, Guetta tasks himself to create a documentary about the evolution of street art – as a result, much of Gift Shop is dimly lit and handheld.

Of course, this journey requires him to enter the upper echelon of the underground art world to find the reclusive success, known simply as Banksy.

While Banksy’s face appears in the shadows throughout the film's duration, and his voice is distinctly altered to keep his identity a mystery, other street-art figures, whose pieces are illegal and unsanctioned, brave the camera and show their faces. It is liberating to see these young creators bare their identities and show off their works, many of which are sublime.

Graffiti may be considered reprehensible, and much of what is sprayed onto alley walls have similar attributes to that of a toilet bowl. But there is a breathtaking amount of pleasure in watching subversive underground artists craft these bold, bizarre and sacred works, and set them up before unsuspecting pedestrians. Through Guetta’s camera, this world blossoms to life.

But Exit Through the Gift Shop is not merely an effort to broadcast the triumphs of a brazen art movement – it doesn’t try to paint these artists as heroes with spray cans.

Instead, Banksy’s film targets the phonies and the posers who withhold any artistic integrity. They are the people who decide to go the way of the film’s title, capitalizing on art by crafting works as a method for commerce rather than for expression.

We live in an age where the value of making concrete art has fallen by the wayside in a race for hype, fame and cash. Advertisements come from digitally altered images and their creators still win awards. People can become celebrities by uploading their videos onto YouTube or entering televised competitions, and are soon clearing their mantle for Grammys galore. What qualifies as true art anymore?

So, what happens when Guetta decides to ditch the camera and become his own street-art persona? The results may surprise you.

Gift Shop is one of those rare occasions where I can describe a film as “brilliant.” It brims with zest and humour and intrigue. It's an exciting look into a mysterious genre of art for the first hour, and then stops on the fly to turn into a potent analysis of the meaning of “art” in today’s society and what the term now connotes.

But whether or not Exit Through the Gift Shop is a “prankumentary,” as one critic has coined, there’s no denying it’s a one-of-a-kind treat: a movie that celebrates art that’s also a work of art worth celebrating. And that’s no joke.