(REVIEW) Exit Through the Gift Shop

Though Inside Job took home the prize for Best Documentary at last night's Academy Awards, a cloud of controversy surrounded the prospects of another documentary nominee, Exit Through the Gift Shop.

 This film was directed by the enigmatic British artist Banksy, whose anonymity is one of his greatest claims to fame.  A few days before the awards took place, it was announced that the Oscar ceremony planners would not allow Banksy to accept his award anonymously.

This being the case, I was eagerly rooting for Exit Through the Gift Shop's victory last night, if only to see what sort of shenanigans the snubbed artist would get up to.  Justin Timberlake's presentation quips centered around claiming that he was Banksy, though most members of the audience didn't seem to understand the joke.  The Onion even got in on the fun, tweeting "Don’t recognize the person 9 rows up, 15 seats in. Must be Banksy" midway through the ceremony.

So, for the vast majority of you that haven't seen this film (available now on dvd and Netflix instant streaming): What is this movie about, for it to cause such a stir?

Exit Through the Gift Shop begins by detailing the life of one Thierry Guetta, a French immigrant and family man with an obsession with capturing life on film.  He records the world around him at every opportunity, using up handfuls of tapes a day.  He hardly ever goes back and watches these tapes; his only care is that life is recorded, and doesn't feel the need to relive it.  Through a family relation that calls himself Space Invader, Guetta is introduced to the underground world of street art.  By following his cousin around the city late into the night as he creates his graffiti work, Guetta finds a focus for his filming obsession.

Over a period of months Guetta accompanies handfuls of street artists, filming their exploits under the pretense of gathering material to make a documentary about street art.  In reality, making something out of his recordings was the last thing on Guetta's mind.  Eventually, he encounters the gold standard of street artists, Banksy, who takes Guetta under his wing.

After documenting many Banksy's exploits, Guetta is encouraged to go off and try to create art on his own.  After discovering that Guetta had no intention of making his documentary, Banksy took it upon himself to craft the film, in the end making Thierry Guetta the film's true focus.  The film's final act, which documents Guetta's gradual metamorphosis into the hyped-up artistic phenomenon Mr. Brainwash, ultimately raises these fundamental questions: what is art, and can anyone create it?

The film portrays attendees of art conventions as individuals who can't recognize true art, and who are incredibly susceptible to hype and media suggestion.  Even Exit Through the Gift Shop's title is indicative of one of the film's major themes: the commercialization and over-saturation of what was once a legitimate and personal underground art movement.

To protect the provocative impact of the film itself, I will leave my commentary at that.  Since the film's release, it has stirred up wild rumors and controversy over whether parts of the film were staged, or even whether the entire documentary is an elaborate hoax masterminded by Banksy.  Judge for yourself: hoax or no, Exit Through the Gift Shop is a poignant and multi-facetted look at the world of artistic expression and commercialization that kept me thinking for weeks after I viewed it.