Breaking the Law Really Has Never Looked Like so Much Fun

“Exit Through the Gift Shop” (2010) 9/10

“I used to encourage everyone I knew to make art; I don't do that so much anymore.“

This is the first review of a Independent/Documentary film to appear on GrabYourSourPatchKids, and let me tell you, it is a great one. Reading the synopsis for this movie did not prepare me at all for this movie, and I am very glad for it. This movie follows a avid—almost to the point of obsession—cameraman/street artist, and his quest to capture his entire life on film. Frenchman Thierry Guetta lost his mother when he was 11 years old to an illness his whole family hid from him. After that he vowed to film everything about his life so he would never overlook or miss details about his life ever again.

“I felt like I should capture everything on film. I felt like everything that I would capture, these moments—anytime in my life—it would be the last time that I would see it the same way.” Thierry Guetta

This film is everything I don't usually attribute to documentaries per se. it is fun, exciting, thought provoking, and above all interesting. It dives into the seedy underbelly of street art. Thought they talk quite a bit about graffiti, it goes into all sorts of media. It follows this mans journey as a “cameraman for the street artists” as he follows them around and gets up close and personal with some of the most notorious street artists is L.A., Paris, and London.

The filming can be a bit dicey at times, because they use a lot of footage that Thierry took with his hand held and not so great video camera. This however, did not bother me because it added to the grit and the unclean feel. This overall feel to the movie really brought home the fact that although street art is illegal—there are actually a number of time when he and his friends get caught in the film—it is a lot of the time so beautiful. Some of the shots in this film took drab, boring looking buildings and made them into beautiful works of art.

It was not until the last 20 minutes of the movie that I realized my favorite part about it. This film was originally supposed to be a film about a famous British street artist named Banksy. Guetta had made it his life goal to get enough footage and interviews to be able to make a documentary about this artist. Soon after Banksy received the rough cut of the film that was being made for him, he realized that it was terrible—and more importantly, he realized that he wanted to make a documentary about Guetta. As Banksy says in the film, “The film is the story about what happened when [Guetta] tried to make a documentary about me, but he was...actually a lot more interesting than I am. So now...well... the film is kind of about him.”

If you have ever looked at the side of a graffiti covered building and thought that it was even remotely cool and interesting—which I am pretty sure most people have—then you have to see this documentary. It lends great insight on the lives and activities of these “outlaws” and shows a good picture of how these artists ultimately felt about Guetta, the man who became a superstar in the street art world in less than a year.