This is an odd duck. This 1995 anime is a triptych of seemingly unrelated stores from Katsuhiro Ôtomo, the author of Akira (and who was also supervising director on the film version).
The first story is extremely similar to Solaris (either version) and that’s not a bad thing. In the far future, what is essentially a garbage truck in space responds to an SOS coming from a floating spacecraft graveyard. Two men search the interior of the craft to determine where the signal is originating from. It seems highly unlikely it was sent by a living person, as the ship is ancient and not even intact.
And, yet, the central space in the craft turns out to be a vast space resembling the hall of an old European palace. Such a thing existing in space reminded me of the final scenes in 2001, of the eerie and formal rooms where Dave Bowman will watch himself age.
There’s a young woman who appears sporadically around the ship, enchanting the younger of the two men. No surprise the woman is long dead and it is the ship’s computer keep her alive as an avatar. It can even recreate things from her memories, reshaping junk to do so.
This is the springboard for the most interesting visuals in this segment, if not the entire movie. Also, this segment has the best artwork of the three, with atmospheric touches such as a beam of light capturing dust motes floating in the air. I also really liked the bit where a rotting piano is being “played” by rivulets of oil dripping onto different keys.
The ship is a trap, and the bait is people and items recreated from the two guys’ memories. The computer creates a facsimile of the older guy’s daughter, and I was surprised by the emotional heft this had. When given the choice, does one live with a harsh reality or would you be happier with a simulacrum of something long gone? The ship’s computer is like the twins in The Shining: it just wants to play with you. Forever. And ever. And ever.
The second story is lighter in tone, though having a significant body count. This black comic piece starts with a guy getting an injection in a doctor’s office. Already I was getting worried this would be providing fuel for anti-vaxxers.
But, no, what really gets things rolling is a random pill the guy later takes from the many bottles of prototype drugs in the office of his boss at the pharmaceutical company. Maybe there’s a lesson to be learned here, and I suspect it has something to do with those parties the young folk have nowadays where they take pills at random from the vast stockpiles of their grandparents’ medications.
Anywho, turns out the pill was a bioweapon in development, per a Japanese and American military joint effort. I’m not sure what the original purpose of the weapon was to be. All I know is, the pill combined with the doctor’s injection results in the guy giving off deadly stink waves. Hence the title of this segment: Stink Bomb. Ba-dump-bump.
Summoned by the head of the company, our hapless protagonist walks a great distance, accidentally slaughtering the populace along the way. The full force of the military is unleashed in an attempt to stop him, to no avail. It’s like an especially morbid Buster Keaton short. There’s a particularly humorous reveal when he emerges from a tunnel, only to face what appears to be the entire air force.
The last story has a tone somewhere between that of the previous two. It follows the husband, mother and son of a family living in a city fighting an eternal war. The imagery immediately brought to mind the animations of Terry Gilliam, as cannons occupy seemingly every available space on the exterior of every building.
But this thin commentary on the military-industrial complex is slight, even for a short film. Of the three segments, this one feels the least substantial. It is little more than an idea, without being developed into a full story.
Memories is an interesting experience, though I was only impressed with the first of the three segments. Curiously, that is the only one to which the title might apply. If you haven’t seen the original Solaris, I would watch that first and then see the first story of this picture. I’m not sure one needs bother with the rest of it.
Dir: Kôji Morimoto, Tensai Okamura, Katsuhiro Ôtomo
Starring Marc Swint, Robbie Daymond, Frank Todaro
Watched on Amazon Prime