Banksy and the Rise of Outlaw Art
Vision FilmsBanksy is a name symbolic of the street art movement, its sudden rise in recent decades has paved the way for a new form of expression and criticism aimed at politics, culture and awareness. It is a movement pioneered by a handful of tremendously talented individuals, and by far the most famous of all is Banksy. Even today his identity remains a secret while his art and mainstream stunts are as famous as some of the all-time greats within the world of art. Banksy and the Rise of Outlaw Art gives a generalised overview of his career, his rise and continued acclaim as one of the world’s greatest, thought-provoking street artists.
Early on, the documentary dives deep into who exactly Banksy is, but it’s unlikely the public will ever receive an answer to this question; the documentary knows this and assumes the audience do too.. It is not just a façade for some form of mock exposé. There are genuine moments throughout the documentary that explore more than who Banksy is and the cultural revolution he began. Treating us to the history of street art, and how important it is to those heavily involved in it, director Elio Espana brings to light the reasons for becoming a street artist. The satisfaction artists feel in seeing their art travelling around the city, or the rebellious attitude of many taking part. It’s portrayed as a balance between remaining anonymous, but getting their work out there to as many veins of the public as possible.
Moments throughout do detour — tangents lead us to nowhere interesting, aimless in their presentation and flimsily attached to a documentary on graffiti art. The more this happens, the more the viewer begins to feel that Banksy’s name was in the title more to pool in a general audience. It becomes a documentary attempting to cram in just about everything that happened after Banksy’s birth. Margaret Thatcher, breakdancing, the history of the United Kingdom, drugs and of course, they try to make time for Banksy and the work he inspired in-between. There just isn’t enough focus on Banks himself, , his rise or his outlaw art, as the title of this documentary, would suggest.
About an hour into the documentary, the viewer is thankfully reminded that this is indeed a documentary on Banksy. After traipsing through irrelevant pieces of b-roll footage and build-up, we enter the age of Banksy’s work. Unfortunately, this is simply still images of his work and not much else, making for yet more wasted potential as we watch an analysis of his work, when in reality, Banksy’s elusive nature makes him and his work almost unknowable.
The documentary sadly squanders the potential of being a musing on Banksy’s influence and the rise of graffiti artwork. Interesting interviews and a handful of certainly nice examples of who Banksy is and why his work is important, but nothing beyond what most fans of his work will already know. The documentary is far too focused on the politics of the time, rather than the artists it inspired and the line between politics and rave culture roars over the more interesting moments that could have been explored in more depth. Perhaps this elusive nature was purposeful but similar to that of Exit Through the Gift Shop, Espana’s Banksy and the Rise of Outlaw Art misses the mark.