Film Review - The Dark Side of the Moon (2002)

We all know that Apollo 11 went to the Moon, right? Or did it? Well, yes, it did; however, the idea of a Moon-landing conspiracy makes for an interesting movie premise. Director William Karel’s The Dark Side of the Moon is a mockumentary that combines archive footage, edited interview footage with men like Henry Kissinger and Don Rumsfeld taken from an earlier, unrelated documentary Karel made about the Us national security policy, as well as fictional characters portrayed by actors. This blend makes for fun and engaging film.

The movie starts with an actual event. Stanley Kubrick, when shooting Barry Lyndon, used one of a handful of Zeiss lens originally designed for NASA to use in the Apollo program. From this kernel of truth, Karel tells an elaborate story in which Richard Nixon, senior members of the US national security community and NASA recruit Kubrick - fresh off the success of 2001: A Space Odyssey - to fake footage of the Moon landing, when what is discovered that there is no usable film from the actual landing. Nixon later, in a drunken stupor, orders the CIA to assassinate the film crew, which results in an army of killers wandering around Southeast Asia. Except for Kubrick, who gets to use the lens.

The film is littered with Easter Eggs, like the fictional people being named after characters from Kubrick and Hitchcock films. There are also a lot of ahistorical bits of information given out to let you know it’s all a joke. For example, Lyndon Johnson is said to have been governor of Texas, an office he never held.

There are some, however, who haven’t gotten the joke. They think this is either an actual documentary or a fictionalized account of a real Moon landing conspiracy. The lengths to which people will contort reality to their bizarre worldview is truly amazing. For more Kubrick-related conspiracy theories by people who believe them, check out Room 237. One of the subjects of that documentary thinks that The Shining was made by Kubrick to tell the world the Moon landing was a hoax.

The Dark Side of the Moon lampoons these ideas and conspiracy theories in general; but, it does so in a very creative way. The use of edited interviews of real people is fits in with how pseudo-science shows (e.g., Ancient Aliens) regularly use out of context or partial comments from real scientist to support their ideas.

The cast of The Dark Side of the Moon does a nice job, fitting in with the very “real-world” tone of the film. And the story builds in a engaging fashion, starting plausibly enough - that NASA turns to Hollywood to make the space program “sexy” - before veering off into lunacy…or, is that Lunar-cy?

This is an exemplary mockumentary. A must see for fans of the style, science fiction movie fans, and conspiracy buffs. Check it out.