Exit Through the Gift Shop is a documentary film by famous street artist Banksy depicting a few episodes from the establishment path of Thierry Guetta, aka Mr. Brainwash, as he first got introduced into the scene of street art as a filmmaker, who wanted to make a documentary about it, and later proceeded to become an artist himself. The film tells about a few artists, including Invader, Zeus, Shepard Fairey, Banksy himself, and others; in particular it sheds some light on the Banksy’s role in Mr. Brainwash becoming a popular artist, although not on Banksy’s personality.
This is pretty good documentary. At first it seems to be about the street art and artists, for some reason beaded on the stem story of wannabe filmmaker Guetta, who loved to film but didn’t know anything about actually making movies. As it evolves, the true story gradually reveals itself, giving the audience some food for though on the subject of modern art in general, and quality and essence of certain artists.
The narrative builds up rather consistently and has a few twists that make it all pretty interesting. The position of the author is also among the things that make it engaging – Banksy seems to perceive himself as a creator of a monster; I think he was shocked by the transformation of Guetta, and didn’t know what to think about it. I think the idea behind this film was not only to relieve himself of the burden of this story, but also to get answers to the questions troubling him, such as, does the appearance of MBW negates the street art in general, since it is virtually impossible to tell a piece of art from a parody on it?
Great quality of this film is that it does not provide definitely answers to questions implied by the story, but lets a viewer think about them and decide for him- or herself. And, of course, the documentation of the history of street art, as fractional as it is, is highly valuable as well.
The execution is nice enough – most of the footage used is of not very good quality, so that leaves an imprint, but the interviews add great pieces to the mix, and the editing is superb.
All in all, this film is definitely worth watching – at the very least it would give some understanding of the state of the modern art, as of the end of 2000s.
Time: 01:26:37
Released in: 2010
Directed by: Banksy
Appearance by: Banksy, Mr. Brainwash, Space Invader, Debora Guetta, Monsieur André, Zeus, Shepard Fairey, Ron English, Caledonia Curry, Borf, Buffmonster, Steve Lazarides, Wendy Asher, Roger Gastman, Laurent Nahoum-Vatinet
Entertaining quality: 5 out of 5
Documentary quality: 5 out of 5
IMDB page: link
®shoomow, 2018
Cinegmatic 