I’ve been watching two things this week, SciFi Anime and Cronenberg films and I’m (almost) out of Cronenberg films.

The first thing consumed this week was Memories, a 1995 sci-fi Anime anthology consisting of 3 shorts. The first and strongest of them is Magnetic Rose, drenched in some of the plot and aesthetics of Alien, it’s about space scrap-haulers investigating an SOS beacon and attempting a rescue. Naturally, more is found than bargained for and then used to explore loneliness in life, death and space. It leaves such a wonderfully haunting and beautiful feeling behind. The next short is Stink Bomb and it is incredibly silly while still being genuinely horrifying. A Japanese salaryman takes the wrong medication, becoming a walking, stinking and unaware bioweapon. In his trail he leaves death, all people and animals instantly snuffed out, but also a trail of blooming and fruiting plants. It’s a poignant detail, this trail of perfect blossom following a smelly business man who’s single focus blinds him to the chaos he’s causing. I really liked this short too, while Magnetic Rose is probably the reason you should watch the anthology, Stink Bomb is also worth your time. The ideas explored here and in the final short are varied and fascinating. Cannon Fodder is the last, most aggressively political (and obvious?) of the bunch. A boy wakes to spend his day learning about ballistics and mechanics, he has one goal, joining the war-machine that is his culture. They shoot endlessly at an unseen enemy, with tannoy constantly announcing hits and rates of fire. The boy’s father is a meek nearly faceless loader, one cog in the machine of endless war. People protest against the cancerous effects of cheap gunpowder, thoughts of stopping the war clearly banished from anyones mind. The idea of endlessly firing from this junk pile city built for war is very Warhammer 40k and I wish they spent longer exploring the idea, but this is more of an atmospheric and exploratory piece. It’s a blunt and effective and kinda depressing short, not really at all what I expected at the end of this anthology.

We move now to Infinity Pool, with Brandon Cronenberg again folding themes of identity and belonging into the body horror learnt from his father. The film uses these themes, that body of work, to ask; what would you do if your actions were free of consequence? This is the life of his obscenely wealthy main characters, one insulated from all but the most superficial of punishment. In the real world ‘punishment’ often amounts to being bullied off social media, not staring in popculture artefacts or a slight reduction in profile. Brandon Cronenberg perhaps sees these superficial ‘cancelations’ clearer than us, his wealthy characters watch and laugh as consequence is dolled out, their crimes escalate and they just keep paying away the repercussions. Infinity Pool is angry about this, knowing there’s nothing to be done, no single villain to take down or Judge Dredd to bring justice to this world of ours, the problem is structural.

The film is also filled with self doubt and neuroses, Brandon is worried he is just double of his father, that his work is measured carefully against Cronenberg the elder before being considered independently. What if he is just a nepotism baby and when the nepotism runs out he’ll awake naked and alone, a talentless hack? I personally think he’s fantastic and increasingly stands out from papa Cronenberg, but appreciate that I say that while comparing the two and drawing endless parallels. It will be interesting to see if his work remains in dialogue or breaks off into it’s own thing. Possessor is still his best film, but I think Infinity Pool leaves many threads he’ll continue to pull at, much like our other Cronenberg of the week, Dead Ringers.

“I’ve often thought that there should be beauty contests for the insides of bodies.” Started it’s life as a near throwaway line in Dead Ringers but became much of the premise for David Cronenberg’s later work Crimes of the Future. We see things start here that will echo into his sons work, that came to define body horror and launched ‘Cronenbergian’ into adjective-hood. It’s a film about the fidelity of copies, revolving around the Mantles, twin Gynaecologists who use their position to manipulate and assault their patients. In not only his best, but one of the best acting performances I’ve seen, Jeremy Irons plays both twins to perfection. You just always know which one he is, even when he’s one pretending to be the other. Cronenberg plays with you here too, trusting you to know which twin is on screen and using that to manipulate your expectations. It’s just such good filmmaking, many scenes guide you though realisations and revelations in character, relying solely on Irons performance(s?). Overcoming the novelty of the ‘one dude playing twins’ thing is always a question with these roles, in Alien Covenant for example, Fassbenders’ duel role comes across as much less serious, even given the surrounding tone. I think you’ve got to just go all in and ignore that novelty to succeed; that’s what Cronenberg does at least. It really is two entirely different characters who look the same and after a while they almost don’t? Once you’ve spent time in this world you honestly feel you could tell them apart at a glance. That’s perhaps why the film feels so unsettling, the transformation of one actor into two totally different people.

The last thing I wanted to talk about is Planetes, it’s a 2003 anime series festooned in science futurism and it was just what I needed to watch this week. The premise is simple; as humanity steps towards the stars, someone needs to collect all the accumulated garbage of spent stages, dead satellites and general junk left polluting earths orbit. As the dub we watched said “…this is the story of the people who live in a time such as this“. Our main characters (space garbage collectors) are also horribly underfunded, NATO doesn’t care about poor countries, there are complex ulterior motives at play and, sometimes, terrorism is justified because it works.

A normal Planetes episode starts with some people in a silly situation, then escalates, using them as an analogy for larger problems and ends with a solution that still leaves a lot of problems. It’s so human and real, for example radiation exposure is often sited as a reason people can’t or won’t ever live and work in space, Planetes steps around this simply, people get cancer from it, it kills them and the corporations don’t care. These practical and horrible considerations really make the series shine, sometimes they are more lighthearted like the cool MILF pilot Fee having an isolation chamber for smoking in so she doesn’t set off the sprinklers. Watching people carve out lives in this dystopia, watching them see the edges of their politicians’ utopianism, it’s very enjoyable. The scant moments of triumph, where the main characters find some space for themselves are very cathartic.

It’s refreshing to see this level of class consciousness baked right into a show, more recent sci-fi seems preoccupied with explorers and scientists, people who aren’t worried about making a living. Recently there was a refuse collector strike in my home city, everything instantly went to shit, people immediately realised how important the profession is and there was this intrinsic sense of support. The UK is really clothed in strikes right now and it feels like people are realising why? I think more things should be about normal people, even if they are ‘space’ normal people, that kinda reality and feeling should be what good sci-fi is made of.

The ending of Planetes pulls punches, it wraps things up quickly and oddly, generally feeling rushed with a little too happy an ending. Perhaps there was pressure to finish or plans of another season cancelled late. It’s sometimes hard to watch things you want to be better, or feel deserve to be more, but overall Planetes is just abundantly watchable, flowing from humour to grim reality and generally, somehow, hopeful.