Memories (1995)

Memories arrived in 1995, three anime shorts packaged under a single title, and it has aged into something close to a museum piece. Katsuhiro Otomo oversees; Koji Morimoto, Tensai Okamura and Otomo himself direct. The anthology format means the film never settles into one argument, which works in its favor. Three voices pull in three directions, and the friction keeps any of them from hardening into a platform. It is a speculative triptych, assembled by craftsmen, with no apparent interest in instructing anyone.

Magnetic Rose is the strongest of the three, a haunted-house story relocated to a derelict space station. Eva Friedel, an opera diva who murdered her fiance and has spent decades trapping men inside her grief, is a villain of real appetite and agency. She is also a femme fatale of the oldest lineage, Puccini by way of gothic horror. Her power is not offered as commentary on anything. It is the engine of a ghost story, and the film has no interest in making her mean more than she does. The other two segments fare less well as drama, though they are not without teeth.

Stink Bomb turns a hapless lab technician into a walking chemical weapon and lets the corporate and military machinery flail at him, a broad joke with a sour aftertaste about institutions that treat people as inventory. Cannon Fodder, a single unbroken take of a city built entirely around its cannons, is the sharpest of the bunch. A lavishly dressed officer fires the great red gun while a loader stands beside it without safety gear, and the propaganda blares about an enemy nobody has seen. The critique lands through imagery and implication, never a speech. The boy asks why they fight. His father says he will understand when he is older. That is the entire sermon, and it is enough.