EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP (2010) (****)

The best way of looking at this documentary is to look at this credit — A Banksy film. So what does that imply? Street art for one. Provocative cultural commentary. A rebellious spirit. This film is all of those and possibly more. It is a work of art in and of itself.

The best way to start is to look at the story on the surface level. Thierry Guetta is a French transplant to L.A. where he made his money selling vintage clothes to hipsters. He was obsessed with his videocamera and recorded everything. Upon visiting France, he began recording his cousin, a street artist known as Space Invader, who pasted mosaics of SPACE INVADERS characters all over the city. Thierry formed a new obsession with street art and began making friends with the cutting edge artists in the field through his cousin. He began following Shepard Fairey, who is famous for the Andre the Giant/ Obey stencils that lined the streets of L.A. and then the iconic red, white and blue campaign image for Barack Obama. By following these artists, we get a great sense of the art form and how repetition and volume create importance in addition to the strategic placement of the art, which takes on meaning in context with its placement.

Thierry was desperate to meet Banksy, the world's most renowned street artist and the most mysterious. He has never been seen in public. His face for this film is hidden in shadow under a hoodie and his voice is electronically modified. He is often photographed wearing a monkey mask with bulging eyes. His signature image is a stencil of a rat. One of his most provocative pieces was a stencil of a young girl holding balloons that are floating her away, which was painted on the wall separating Israel from the Palestinian territory.

When the film begins, Banksy tells us that he has obtained the hours and hours of Thierry's footage in order to make this film about Thierry, who is far more interesting than him. The reason Thierry films everything is because he missed being around when his mother died and he doesn't want to miss any moments of his loved ones. He became trusted by these outlaw artists because he served as their accomplices. He withstood interrogation by Disneyland security when he got caught filming Banksy's comment on Guantanamo Bay set at the Magic Kingdom.

But what was the footage for other than to fill Thierry's obsessions? Banksy told him it was time to turn the footage into the documentary on street art that he said he was always making. After six months of editing hundreds of hours of footage, Thierry showed Banksy the film. A 90 minute mess. Banksy described it as if it were just someone flipping through the channels on TV. So Banksy asks Thierry for the footage and tells him to go make art in the meantime.

That's what Thierry does. He hires artists to make stencils of him and establishes himself as a street artist. He decides to sell all he has in order to have a big art show in L.A. He promotes it like B.T. Barnum with quotes from Fairey and Banksy. He gets the show previewed in L.A.'s major alternative press paper The L.A. Weekly. But he never makes any of pieces himself, working like a director over other artists. Hundreds of pieces are produced and every one is derivative of other artists from Warhol to Banksy. He becomes a sensation over night and sells his art for tens of thousands of dollars.

This story alone makes the film fascinating. What does it say about the commercial art world that a rip-off artist dubbed Mr. Brainwash can come out of nowhere, have others create his art and make millions? Does a picture of Elvis holding a gun instead of a guitar titled "Don't Be Cruel" really mean anything more than a pun? So why are these hip art collectors eating it up? Because it's not about meaning or the art and that is what Banksy sets out to say. Once street art went mainstream, it lost its meaning.

But wait, this is a Banksy film. Could it all be a hoax? Could this be a performance piece to rank up there with the likes of Andy Kaufman wrestling women? I mean Thierry's moniker is Mr. Brainwash. Could his whole existence be a comment on the lemming like nature of pop culture? MBW's first show had more art than many joint shows. He didn't create it; it was just a commodity that he attached an arbitrary value to. Banksy seems to be dropping hints along the way, but we can never be truly sure. But maybe Banksy’s quote for Mr. Brainwash is a clue – Mr. Brainwash is a force of nature, he’s a phenomenon. And I don’t mean that in a good way.

In the end, it doesn't really matter, because the meaning of the film stays the same. If it is a prank, it is brilliant. Banksy punked art collectors and copycat artists and everyone who wants to assign meaning to the meaningless. If the film is real then Banksy was brilliant enough to see how Mr. Brainwash represents the worst of the art world.

There is a wonderfully telling scene where a contemporary art collector shows off her Banksy. She has all the big names from Hockney to Lichtenstein. Some of it she doesn't even like but there it is hanging on her wall. Her Warhol is too passé so that's now in the closest. For her art is nothing more than a snow globe someone bought on vacation. Only she paid more money for it.