Before teaching Film Studies to students at high school level I used to run my own business – a sandwich shop. We’d open for morning breakfasts and continue through to the mid-afternoon selling lunches.

Joining Coil allows me to share with you some of our more popular sandwiches starting with the Salami Heatwave, served warm / hot on a French baguette. Unfortunately, due to lockdown some of the ingredients were harder to come by than anticipated – the French baguette of all things! As a result, I have substituted it with a ciabatta square. Ideally a long ciabatta would have been better, but they too were short supply.

Anyway, I do hope you try this out and if you do, please give me a shout on Twitter to let me know what you think.

*INGREDIENTS*

Ciabatta

Salami

Jalapenos

Salsa mix (red onion; sweetcorn; cherry or plum tomatoes; fresh chili; red bell pepper; lime; parsley)

Cheddar (optional, but works better with it – I suppose all of the ingredients are interchangeable dependent on your taste-buds!)

*METHOD*

Pre-heat oven (high).

Layer the salami onto one side of the ciabatta.

Add your jalapenos to the amount dependent on how spicy you like your food.

Add a *generous helping* of the salsa mix
(dice the red onion and quarter your plum tomatoes; chop the parsley and slice the chili; dice the red bell pepper and squeeze the juice of a lime (bottled lime juice is fine) into a dish. Mix all the salsa ingredients into a bowl – don't forget to add the sweetcorn).

Full disclosure: they didn't have any fresh limes when I shopped for the ingredients so I had to use lemons for the photograph, of which I touched up on Photoshop to make it look more like the correct citrus – in colour at least!

Grate enough cheddar to roughly cover the naked side of the ciabatta bread and *add a touch on the side with the filling.*

Place in the oven for 5 minutes or

*until the cheese has melted.*

Once out of the oven, fold over, cut in half and *take a bite!*

TIP 1:

All images in this post are my own.

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All photographs are my own and taken just a short hop and a skip away from where I live.

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When mining for renewable energy on the moon, an astronaut uncovers a deadly truth about his employers’, jeopardising his attempt to return home to his family.

You’d be forgiven for missing Moon when it was released, as it doesn’t carry the weight and fanfare of cookie cutter science fiction blockbusters that tend to hijack our cinema screens, leaving little room for low-budget independent gems such as this. Therefore, I hope to redress the balance somewhat by shining the spotlight on Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) and his trusted friend, GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey).

Technology is a staple for science fiction narratives so I’ll start with GERTY – a robot programmed to help Sam. Inside the lunar base we see it glide across the foreground frame in low-key light soon after the opening sequence, with Sam bathed in high-key lighting in the background. It’s as if we are being primed to distrust the robot from the outset. The ominous tones from the non-diegetic score at this moment emphasises our negative emotional response. It all stems from our ingrained understanding of the science fiction genre whereby technology is seen as a deviant to man. We only have to go back to Hall 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968) to see how society views the unknown. Back then the world was gripped by intrigue and fear in equal measure as two nations battled it out to send the first man on the moon so the film payed to the zeitgeist of the time. Moreover, this was a society in the midst of a counterculture movement remonstrating against authority and governments shrouded in secrecy, furthering our mistrust of them during the 1960s and 1970s in particular. It’s important to note authority here as it plays an integral role to themes of anti-establishment and corporate greed explored in Moon (in all honesty the spectator’s antipathy for such ideologies rarely changes whatever the generation – it’s an easy target, and could be argued rightly so).

Where Hal defied man, which ultimately led to the hero’s downfall, GERTY it turns out, helps Sam, thus, differentiating between the two time periods’ attitudes towards technology. Rather than being fearful of technological change, today we wield it as a tool to assist us – it’s as though we can’t exist without it. Sam’s relationship with GERTY is as human as it gets involving self-sacrifice for the benefit for the other to live in a poignant and touching moment between the two at the end. A far cry from Dave's experiences with Hal.

Our first segue begins with Lunar Industries. The film opens with their promotional video of the world in chaos – overpopulation and starving children, with a heavy dose of pollution suffocating the planet (a topical issue indeed). The footage seamlessly shifts away from the downbeat tone to one of serenity and harmony with lush surroundings and happy, smiling faces everywhere, all down to their efforts to have finally solved the energy crisis by mining helium-3 on the moon for our consumption on earth. This paints Lunar Industries as heroes – after all, they have single-handedly saved mankind! But at what cost? That’s where we transition to Sam Bell on the treadmill with a fully grown beard and paling complexion, visualising a form of realism within the genre. No more square jawed, broad shouldered masculine type protagonists we were so used to seeing in Hollywood of the past, instead, a down to earth, dare I say, ‘average Joe’ looking lead to hang our hat on. This was key to setting the correct tone from the outset to make our hero relatable to spectators, as we need to align with him so we can view Lunar Industries as the villain. We barely get a glimpse of any figureheads of the company throughout the film, but because of what happens to Sam as the plot unfolds we are able to connect the dots ourselves instead of having them drawn in for us.

So now to Sam Bell. We experience his feelings of isolation and anxiety though carefully plotted beats and stylistic choices from Jones. Our hero undergoes a transformation emotionally and physically, deteriorating in mind and body. This is exemplified in a pivotal moment when it’s revealed that Sam Bell is a clone and interacts with his other self who was awoken by GERTY. The fast degrading and tired image of our first Sam against a sprightly and boisterous second Sam is a binary opposite designed to elicit sympathy for our characters. Seeing where one is on the brink of death and the other who can only watch as he sees what will happen to him in three years (what transpires to be the life span of the Sam Bell clones) only heightens our sensibilities and helps to bridge another important theme – slave labour. Is the world aware that Lunar Industries is using clones to bring us our new energy source? Do we consider clones to have the same rights humans? Watching what happens to Sam Bell sure makes me feel he is one of us. Within the first fifteen minutes we see him hold up his hand to the screen of a recorded video message from his wife, Tess, showing him Eve, the daughter he hasn’t yet seen. He misses them, and he only has two weeks left of his contract before he gets to go home – at least that’s what Lunar Industries has promised him. Surely to yearn for human contact is to be human?

A powerful sequence in the final third of the film features Sam who is now days if not hours away from ‘death’ – the desaturated colour palette adds emphasis to his complexion, which is now ghost-like. Continuous coughing up of blood in the lead up is a signifier to remind us of his ill-treatment and demise. Here, he drives his rover out to an encrypted transmitter mast and gains access to a live feed (with help from GERTY in a poignant scene prior) to call Tess on earth. The call is picked up by a teenage girl who reveals her mother passed away years ago. Eve, now fifteen is a far cry from the infant Sam thought he was going home to. It’s as though Sam has had twelve years erased from his life – a prison-like sentence, which is exemplified further by his sleeping quarters consisting of a bunk with emoji face markings scribed to the side panel of the toilet, reminiscent of notches to indicate a time of solitude. A collection of photographs of Tess and a young Eve demonstrate his need to hold onto memories, including dreams he has of Tess. All of which drive forward the notion that Sam is very much alive and human. Jones makes a beeline to this – to ensure Sam is afforded as many moments where he can experience varying degrees of emotions to position the spectator firmly with him and in doing so, wants us to question Lunar Industries’ motives and subsequent ethics surrounding our rights as human beings to exist in a fair and equal society.

Inside the rover, the shot lingers on Sam’s facial expression – distraught. The sun seemingly dipping beyond the horizon of the moon casts long shadows confirming the notion that his life is coming to an end. An establishing exterior image of the lunar rover on the desolate and grey moon in the foreground with the vibrant, awe-inspiring image of the earth far off in the distance embeds the theme of isolation and despair. The terrific score by Clint Mansell helps to add levity to the moment, reminding us of corporate greed at the expense of human life though Sam’s inner and outer turmoil.

Film is an emotive art form – if you see a character cry on screen in a close up does that make you feel upset also? If so, are we to say that Film is contagious? I love film and ponder the many ways in which filmmakers use techniques to manipulate our emotions seemingly at will. Or perhaps we as a spectators have the ultimate control and are not susceptible to the whims of the director because of external factors such as age, gender and personal experiences? Does science fiction favour the male gender to the point that no technique will ever make a female spectator care? Replace the male lead with a female, does the dynamic change? It shouldn’t matter as Sandra Bullock proved in Gravity (Cuarón, 2013). Does the narrative matter more than style? Whatever your thoughts, one thing is for certain, film has the ability to capture the hearts and minds of the spectator.

I hope you enjoyed this edition of Film Archives. If you haven't already, you check out my write up on Double Indemnity here.

Image for the main header was found on unsplash [](https://unsplash.com/photos/dTLlhgeEJWg) by Timothy Eberly. All other screenshots from Moon are sourced from IMDB.

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