Exit Through the Gift Shop

Of course, on the face of it it’s ridiculous. A guerilla artist, sticking it to the man, enraging council officials everywhere, and… raking it in at the box office.

But what is clear from the start of Exit Through the Gift Shop is that Banksy is acutely aware of the irony. A film within a film within a film, the ground shifts more times than a shaken spray can in this self-deprecating jab at the art world.

Frankly I don’t know what to believe.

Banksy appears (almost) with his voice distorted and head swamped in a big hood. Anonymity assured, he presents, not himself, but the street art movement through the camera lens of fan Thierry Guetta.

An unlikely star of the show, French-American Guetta trails the movers and shakers of this underground scene. We see the intrepid Shepard Fairey at work, scaling walls, lugging cans of paint around, and keeping an eye out for the police.

Cut to Paris and ‘Space Invader’ is pasting characters from the computer game on every spare surface.

Although you’ve seen it a million times before, it’s difficult not to gape at footage of Banksy’s work on the West Bank, or the mock-up of a Guantánamo Bay detainee that grinds Disney Land to a halt. Banksy skulks in the background as Guetta transforms from doting fan to greedy self-publicist. Reinventing himself as ‘Mr Brainwash’ he sucks the life-blood from the street-art movement, dispassionately reproducing Warhol/Banksy-style pieces on a massive scale.

Banksy has created a monster.

“Andy Warhol was replicating images to show they were meaningless,” he says. “And now, thanks to Mr Brainwash, they’re definitely meaningless.”

The whole thing is so tongue-in-cheek it hurts, but perhaps there’s an edge of truth to his regret. Once a countercultural icon, now the nation’s darling, Banksy is dogged by shrill cries of ‘sell out’.

Can you be anti-establishment with Leonardo DiCaprio at your premier? Well, by playing with our expectations, running rings around the art industry, and dismissing its own hype, I think this film manages it brilliantly.

Catherine Shannon