Exit Through the Gift Shop

Banksy is a mysterious character, a man who goes only my a single name like Madonna or Ghandi, but unlike the aforementioned who’s lifes and identity are well documented and the subject of common knowledge, nobody knows who he is. When I say nobody I talk of the common public, I’m sure his mum knows who he is, but then does she know her son is a world famous graffiti artist. Banksy’s film debut, Exit Through the Gift Shop, is as interesting as the art he creates, the film starts with French man Thierry Guetta, who has a strange obsession of filming everything that he does, and through a visit with his cousin, street artist Invader, ends up documenting the growing street art scene. Starting with his cousin, he ends up following Shepard Fairey, which eventually leads him into the world of Banksy, all under the assumption Guetta is filming for a street art documentary. Guetta eventually ends becoming a street artist, and in turn the subject of the street art documentary he was pretending to make, as Banksy takes the Frenchmen’s footage and turns the camera back on Guetta himself, and his rise as Mr. Brainwash.
Exit through the gift shop has been considered by many as a hoax, some believing it and others not, the main speculation comes from Guetta’s overnight rise to the street art hierarchy, and the fact that he is never seen properly creating any art. But if this a documentary, and not a crafty work of fiction, it has to be the best documentary I’ve seen since Man on Wire, the Oscar winning documentary following Phillippe Petit, an equally mental Frenchmen, and his death defying (and illegal) tightrope walk between the now deceased twin towers. A fixture of interviews, archive footage (filmed by petit and his colleagues), and dramatically shot reconstruction. The film flips between Petit and his associates talking about previous stunts, as well as the preparation and actioning of the twin towers stunt. Its more like a heist movie than a documentary, and the way that Petit recounts every detail of the stunt, captivates you, filling you with a fraction of the excitement he and his team must of felt at the time.