An interesting film, speckled with humour, Exit Through The Gift Shop is an insightful look into a sub-culture of graffiti artists. The first half of the film is very watchable, and is mostly driven by the mystery of Banksy and his often witty and provocative artworks. Other artists are profiled, such as a chap called Invader who creates mosaics of characters from early 1980's video games and sticks them high up on buildings etc
Not sure what the point of all that is really, but it's quirky and colourful and preferable to another artist who simply stands by a passing train spraying truck after truck with a continuous stream of spray paint.
However, when the focus shifts exclusively to Thierry ("Terry") Guetta, who until this point has largely been the man behind the camera doing the filming, the film remains watchable, but was less engrossing. On the advice of Bansky, Guetta is encouraged to hold a one-man show. He then goes into creative overdrive, with a set up much like Andy Warhol's Factory, producing masses of artwork often based on works of Warhol. There is an uncertainty as to the authenticity of Guetta, and it seems the film might be a blend of fact and fiction. The audience are shown childhood photos of the Frenchman Guetta and told tales of his formative years which explain why he has had to document everything on film ever since. Yet I felt the filmmaker was spinning a yarn here to create a background to a character, and I didn't quite buy it. So when the emphasis of the film turns exclusively to Guetta and his art show I lacked empathy and identification with him. Guetta is an anomaly, he has fallen into the art world by chance, not by talent or drive. This may well be the whole point of the film: he's a real-life artist because the film says so, and therefore it raises the question what constitutes Art, and does it become Art just because we're told it's Art and it sells for thousands of dollars?
People I saw this film with were mostly baffled or just plain annoyed they hadn't seen something else instead. Without doubt it is worth seeing if there is an interest in Banksy, street art, or maybe the art world in general, but it is an acquired taste. It seems the appeal of Bansky to the masses (such as the hundreds of thousands who queued for up to six hours at a time to see his recent show in Bristol, UK) is that his work is like a witty one-liner, and the audience can quickly "get it" and smile at how clever the work is. Much like a maths student with scant regard for most art, but with an M.C. Escher or a Dali poster on their wall. Instantly they can "get it" and recognise that it's clever. And that is largely how I felt about this film. It is intelligent and well made, and although it didn't particularly engage my emotions, it raised a few smiles, and I left in a state of amused bafflement looking forward to what Bansky will do next.
