Memories

1995. Movie. 114 min. Science fiction/allegory. org Katsuhiro Otomo (manga). dir Koji Morimoto, Tensai Okamura, Katsuhiro Otomo. scr Satoshi Kon, Katsuhiro Otomo. mus Yoko Kanno, others. -bc

Memories is a three-part film made up of unrelated stories conceived by Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo. “Magnetic Rose,” “Stink Bomb,” and “Cannon Fodder” are each directed by different people and done in wildly distinct styles, yet they all confront the collision of humanity and technology, and the unforeseen pitfalls of unrestrained technological advance.

“Magnetic Rose” takes place in outer space in the year 2092 and follows the fate of a multinational space salvage crew after it traces an “S-O-S” call to a seemingly derelict craft that houses the once-grand space mansion of Eva Friedel, an opera singer from Earth who had been famous early in the century. Two of the crew, Miguel and Heinz, enter the mansion’s ruins and are confronted with holographic projections of the once-stately interior, as well as motion holograms of Eva and some of her greatest opera triumphs. Miguel, ever the ladies’ man, is seduced by the imagery—and Eva’s recorded entreaties—while Heinz resists for as long as he can until the source of the projections figures out his weakness.

In “Stink Bomb,” Nobuo, a pharmaceutical employee in a mountain region of Japan, swallows what he thinks is a cold remedy and unwittingly unleashes a bio-warfare plague that leaves him unharmed but kills all human and animal life around him. His superiors in Tokyo, unaware that he’s the cause of the problem, order Nobuo via videophone to deliver certain items to them—no matter what. His eagerness to oblige leaves a trail of death as he races obediently to Tokyo, partly on foot and partly on bike. The police and, ultimately, the military are called in to stop him, but Nobuo is a good company man and follows orders to the bitter end.

“Cannon Fodder” shows us an alternate-universe 20th-century society that is built on the premise of eternal war with a distant enemy. We see a father, mother, and little son who devote their days to the ongoing participation in this perpetual war, with the father loading cannons, the mother making shells on an assembly line, and the son attending school to learn how to work the big guns.

“Magnetic Rose” starts out as a fairly straightforward space story (with echoes of Ridley Scott’s Alien) but changes tone quickly when the two crewmen enter the derelict craft. They encounter a spacious and richly appointed interior, complete with marble pillars, sculpted statues, ornate walls and doorways, massive stairways, lavish drapes, huge painted portraits, and such accessories as an indoor opera house and a sprawling lush garden. It’s a beautiful setting and one that seduces the viewer almost as much as the two crewmen, all to serve the agenda of a machine merely following instructions programmed long ago.

“Stink Bomb” has the bright colors and cheery, open-air look and feel of the comical, similarly themed Roujin Z, which Otomo also scripted. There are scenes of ironic beauty as the yellow cloud that Nobuo gives off in his deadly condition causes flowers to bloom wildly out of season in every field he passes, even though the birds and squirrels are dropping dead on the spot. There are also scenes of spectacular military might, as the armed forces are called out, complete with heavy artillery, tanks, helicopters, fighter jets, and missiles, all to stop the forward march of Nobuo, necessitating some intricate mecha animation.

“Cannon Fodder” is the most abstract piece in the film, crafting a totalitarian society with echoes of Soviet Russia and Iron Curtain Eastern Europe (although the signs are in English), with imagery deliberately designed to recall the allegorical and experimental animation styles of animators from those regions in the 1960s and early ’70s. The cityscape in the film is dark, gray, polluted, and covered in soot and haze, with cannon turrets protruding from every available surface. Directed by Otomo, the twenty-two-minute piece is filled with steam technology and pipes running through every visible space. As such, it looks forward to the very next film Otomo directed, the two-hour feature Steamboy, which was set in an alternate-universe London in 1866 and also used elaborate steam technology.

Katsuhiro Otomo wrote the original stories for all three segments and the screenplays for two of them, “Stink Bomb” and “Cannon Fodder,” and directed the latter. Koji Morimoto, who directed the “Magnetic Rose” segment, also directed “Franken’s Gears” in Robot Carnival and “Beyond” in The Animatrix. Tensai Okamura directed the “Stink Bomb” segment and also directed Kikaider (2000), Medabots, Wolf’s Rain, and the first Naruto movie.

Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue, Tokyo Godfathers) wrote the screenplay for “Magnetic Rose” and served as art director. Yoko Kanno provided the original music heard in “Magnetic Rose.”

In Katsuhiro Otomo’s films technological advances often have a life and logic of their own, and woe to the human who tries to interfere, even when the machines are simply serving the wishes of the people who devised them. In “Magnetic Rose,” it’s the spaceship that is programmed to satisfy the final wish of its sole occupant and goes to great destructive lengths to do so. In “Stink Bomb,” it’s the chemical interaction between a young man on cold medicine and a plague chemical he unwittingly ingests. The irony here is that the more the young man is stressed and made nervous as he pursues his mission against all odds, the greater the cloud of deadly yellow gas he creates. Had his pursuers left him alone and simply made the path clear for him, the death toll would have been much lower. “Cannon Fodder” is about the way technology both serves the need of the society that creates it and then dictates the direction that society takes, based partly on that initial need and partly on technology’s need to expand and improve.

“Magnetic Rose,” at forty-five minutes, has the most intriguing story and the cleverest conceit, with overtones of Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles and Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris, but with a completely original setting and a soundtrack of opera highlights (Madame Butterfly and Tosca), supplemented by original cues from anime composer extraordinaire Yoko Kanno. It’s also stunningly beautiful, given the scope of the interior design and decor that so dominates the piece. It makes one want to rush out to a museum or mansion to see such elegance in real life. Of course, the beauty of the place is just a façade, standing in stark contrast to the actual look of the ship, with its dilapidated ruins and pools of oil that splatter everywhere. It’s quite a nightmarish place to be trapped if you can see with your own unclouded eyes, as the second crewman, Heinz, does . . . at least for a while.

“Stink Bomb,” at forty minutes, is a thoroughly entertaining piece which yields abundant Dr. Strangelove–like black humor out of its macabre procession of unrelenting death. It also has the most action in the film, as the army unleashes its most sophisticated firepower to try and stop the inexorable bicycling employee. While it sounds a cautionary note about the unholy alliance of business, government, and the military (another common theme of Otomo’s) and doesn’t stint on the lethal side effects of such an alliance, it uses this theme to paint a satirical picture of the eager, young loyal salaryman in Japan’s modern economy (as of 1995, that is), whose obeisance to the corporation overshadows all other concerns.

“Cannon Fodder” is the most heavy-handed of the three stories and, at twenty-two minutes, thankfully the shortest. It doesn’t offer humor or suspense, and there are no pretty pictures or scenes of spectacle other than the stark, oppressive landscape of an industrial totalitarian society as imagined through the prism of animation and design styles that once came out of such societies. It’s an impressive piece, nonetheless, particularly in the overarching scope of the society, its entire structural basis a perpetual war with an unseen neighbor. The story succeeds in engaging us through the character of the little boy at its heart who still has hope and dreams and imagination. His drawing of a war scene, imagining himself as a leader in battle, is animated into a full-fledged fantasy scene, one clearly at odds with the nature of the combat being conducted. Yet he is also the one who questions the very basis of his society.

Opera lovers will enjoy the performance excerpts in “Magnetic Rose.”

The character of Eva in the Satoshi Kon–scripted “Magnetic Rose” looks forward to the character of film star Chiyoko Fujiwara in Kon’s second directorial credit, Millennium Actress (2001), another diva gone into hiding. In fact, both feature their characters out in space. “Magnetic Rose” takes place on October 12, 2092, the 600th anniversary of Christopher Columbus setting foot on the shores of the New World.

The company Nobuo works for in “Stink Bomb” is Nishibashi, the same conglomerate that manufactured the Z-001 automated bed in the Otomo-scripted Roujin Z.

advisory The scenes of mass death and destruction in “Stink Bomb” have a tone of black humor. There is nothing gruesome displayed.