Mr. Brainwash is either a genius or the luckiest art-world hustler on the planet. Either way, his story is an interesting paradox of streetwiseness and seeming mental illness. Turns out he is the main character of Exit Through The Gift Shop, the Banksy documentary that has been buzzing since Sundance. While most folks, including me, thought it unusual for the most notorious clandestine artist would be appearing on camera, but in typical Banksy form he turns the tables and employs the opportunity to issue his own spectacle. This time, it is Mr. Brainwash that is the foil, a sort of sad-sack L.A. filmmaker and street art enthusiast who becomes obsessed with his subjects, especially the illusive Banksy. Mr. Brainwash is a Frenchman named Thierry Guetta who gains unprecedented access to many of the most prolific and talented street artists today through his relative, the one and only Invader, at a time when the medium (as well as the art market itself) was heating up quickly. Banksy, as a notorious and talented maverick, became Guetta’s (who had habitually documented numerous murals on his video camera) main obsession in the year running up the “Barely Legal” gallery show in Los Angeles. However, Banksy manages to turn the camera back on Guetta and the result in a seemingly effortless twist on the ‘street art documentary’ that Guetta himself couldn’t pull off. Banksy as a filmmaker crafts a commentary on the state of the art scene as well as a characteristically smart, tongue-in-cheek and ‘meta’ view on the spectacle. The joke turns out to be something I don’t even think Banksy could have conjured up on his own, at least not knowingly.

The interesting phenomena (or perhaps the most implicating) are the roots of this story in Los Angeles, the perfect backdrop to this fantastical tale. If you didn’t manage to catch the first hype on Mr. Brainwash, you didn’t miss much as his ascent was meteoric. Guetta’s rise was solely built at the suggestion by those who he’d been filming over the years, and via some carefully chosen quotes. Brainwash was born a la some sort of Warholian (he does owe equally to Andy as well) daydream, and this is where the core of the documentary seems to amazingly coincidental and too absurdly true to not be some exercise by the hand of Mr. Banksy. Still, the film itself hangs together as timely context for the best street art and most prolific artists, like some modern day ‘Wild Style’ if Lee Quinones was enabled as a self-referential filmmaker. Banksy moving into filmmaking is as natural a move as when he embarked on gallery shows in America. I expect his immersive brand of art could continue to morph to the point that, as in this situation, no one will know who the joke is on, including Banksy, but that is largely the point.

‘Exit Through The Gift Shop’ Opens in Select Cinemas Nationwide from April 16