BANKSY DOES NEW YORK
★★ 1/2
Tracking the street artist’s October 2013 residency in the Big Apple, Banksy Does New York works as a thin but broad survey not just of the artist and what he means, but of the effect he has on people.
Structured as a day-by-day recapping of his pieces, which ranged from more familiar monochrome graffiti pieces to truck-based installations that toured around the city, the documentary follows a pair of eager Banksy fans as they try to get a view of every piece, taking time out to gander at the Instagram-wielding crowds, money-hungry hustlers and art-world hangers-on that essentially went nuts every time they found a new piece.
The film suffers a bit from relying on talking heads who are not always the most eloquent: the sharpest talkers are the ones who evince a degree of skepticism towards Banksy and his 40-feet-away bluntness, which is both a fair point and one that could/should have been counterpointed relatively easily by a sharper thinker about street art. In defence, it mostly only finds glorified fans, people who nod appreciatively without actually having much to say about what’s happening.
Knottier, and more interesting, is the gallery owner who uses squishy logic to justify selling resolutely public pieces for hundreds of thousands/millions. This being the art world, money is a frequent topic of conversation; as Exit Through the Gift Shop proved, whatever else you think of Banksy, he is a complete lightning rod for anyone’s thoughts about commercialization of art. If the jowly art dealers are on shaky ground, where do you put the hustlers who use the gathering of wealthier iPhoners in their otherwise ignored neighbourhood to hide a graffiti tag behind cardboard and charge $5 for a picture? Economic exploitation should be punching up, right? Even better is the art stand near Central Park, selling original works for $60 — and which does a measly $420 in sales all day, people not so interested when they can’t spot Banksy’s imprimatur.
The documentary captures this kind of stuff without really absorbing it: it has a deep appreciation for the sarcastic, sh-t-disturbing ethos of its subject, but can’t actually display any of it. The result is not really so much more than searching the #banksyNY tag on your preferred social media and then listing off the resultant questions; there are some points for knowing an interesting subject, but the doc is too much in its shadow to really capture it. ★★1/2
Banksy Does New York opens May 22 in Toronto.