Plot Summary
The tone of the "documentary" begins with low key revelations of NASA working closely with Hollywood at the time of the Moon landings. Over the course of the tale, Karel postulates that not only did Kubrick help the USA fake the moon landings but that he was eventually killed by the CIA to cover up the truth.
It is finally revealed that this is a mockumentary as the end credits roll over a montage of blooper reels, with the main participants laughing over the absurdity of their lines or questioning if particular ones would give the joke away too soon. Besides being a comedic documentary, it is also an exercise in Jean Baudrillard's theories of hyperreality. In a 2004 interview, the director was asked why he would elect to make a film "closer to a comedy than a serious film"; Karel replied that in the wake of having made serious documentaries, the objective was "de faire un film drôle" (to make a funny film).
Several of the fictitious interviewees, such as Dave Bowman, Jack Torrance, and Dimitri Muffley are named after characters from movies directed by Kubrick. There are also references to films by Alfred Hitchcock, as both Eve Kendall and George Kaplan are character names in North by Northwest, and Ambrose Chapel is a location in the 1956 remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much. The fictitious characters used in the interview are listed in the credits along with the names of the actors portraying them. For example, the rabbi is listed as W. A. Keonigsberg (W. A. probably indicating “Woody Allen,” as Koenigsberg is Woody Allen’s birth name) and the character is played by Binem Oreg.
In addition to the increasingly incredible claims made as the film progresses, several factual errors of note are introduced by the narrator, perhaps intended as clues for the viewer:
- John F. Kennedy’s “We choose to go to the moon” speech was in 1962, not 1961 as was claimed.
- Luna 9 landed on the moon in February 1966, but the narrator states it was in January.
- The narrator states that Apollo 11 was launched on July 17, 1969, when in fact it was launched the day before on July 16.
- Korolev died following surgery to remove a polyp from his intestines, not from a tonsillectomy as is claimed.
- Lyndon Johnson is said to have been the Governor of Texas – an office he never held.
- Likewise, Richard Nixon is erroneously stated as having once been the Governor of California.
- The narrator implies the Cape was selected in part due to the George Bush family influence in Florida, yet no Bush had any connection with Florida until 1980 when Jeb Bush moved his family there. The Cape, however, had become the new missile test facility by 1950.
The soundtrack also includes the song "The American Dream" from Wag the Dog by Barry Levinson, a fiction feature about a secretly government-commissioned Hollywood production of a fake war. At one point, footage featuring the military boarding a plane is underscored by the "right, left, right, left" of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (R. Lee Ermey) from Kubrick's own film, Full Metal Jacket.
Read more about this topic: Dark Side Of The Moon (mockumentary)
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