Vital

Directed by Shinya Tsukamoto

Vital opens with the image of four industrial chimneys and loud clanging sounds, the image ends, the main character Hiroshi opens his eyes in a hospital bed. He wakes from a dream that is as chaotic and powerful as the industrial imagery from the introduction.

The protagonist, once a promising medical student is suffering with amnesia, after a car accident with his girlfriend Ryoko Ohyama in the passenger seat. His parent’s huddle close to his bed, desperate for him to speak, they long to make a connection with their son.

They take him home in a disorientated state. He remembers very little from his past. Back home he wanders aimlessly in the streets and his room, staring into space with no emotion, his eyes are soulless and empty. Hiroshi is a shell of his former self.

In his room he discovers his old medical books gathering dust in a cupboard, he decides to return to University and resume his studies. At University he climbs into the lift and stares at the metal doors, his gaze intense, the doors move up and down unnaturally, shifting against each other, they reflect his tormented state of mind, the left door representing his past that he has no memory of, the right door his present, both fighting against each other ready to collide.

Ikumi a pretty student notices Hiroshi straight away and is attracted to him but he ignores her. At dissection class all the students are given a body to dissect, in Group four Hiroshi and his fellow students including Ikumi unwrap the sheets from the shrouded dead female, a hood covers the girls face. Without a face the body is depersonalised. Hiroshi is the first to cut the flesh. He slices neatly through the thin skin with his scalpel without hesitation.

Ikumi although a gifted student finds the dissection difficult, later Hiroshi finds her standing outside in the rain, her hands tightened around her slender white neck, she tries to choke herself again and again.

Hiroshi remembers being in his apartment with his dead girlfriend Ryoko, he recalls the way they choked each other, both of them clutching each others throats and squeezing, cutting oxygen from the brain, feeling the rush and the closeness of death, then collapsing in a heap on the apartment floor.

He races to the dissection room to the dead body and recognizes Ryoko’s tattoo. He pulls off the hood and sees her face.

Hiroshi realises he has been dissecting his dead girlfriend.

It is through the lacerations in her flesh that his dormant memories now resurface with great clarity and emotion cutting through time.

As he drifts through his days Ryoko appears to him suddenly as though she has come back from the dead. He sees her step into an abandoned stone building where giant rocks stand, water drips into the building and the crevices of the rocks. Ryoko’s hair is soaking wet, she dances, every turn of her head and twist of her torso full of intensity and fraught with energy. Ryoko’s dance is brimming with vivacity, her fierce passion and beauty pour out in the memory. The energy of Ryoko’s spirit is so strong that Hiroshi believes the moments spent with her in his mind are actually happening in the present.

His memories of the past and the present have become interwoven, converging. Hiroshi can no longer differentiate between a past memory and a present memory.

He returns to the dissection table time and time again, sketching every muscle, vein and organ of Ryokos lifeless body, desperate to capture and preserve every physical aspect of her onto paper. Through her physical body he hopes to find her spirit.

Hiroshi visits Ryoko’s grieving parents. He shares his memories of her with them so that their daughter is brough back to life for them once more. With his stories of their precious moments together, the mother and father begin to heal and their torment eases.

Hiroshi sees Ryoko curled on the beach, she stretches her legs out, one, then the other, she dances in the sand, her movements are now frantic, her body pulses with liveliness, she completely mesmerizes him. Every fibre of her being in these dream sequences screams out 'I'm alive'.

Hiroshi tells his father he is confused about time, he says that he feels like the story of the future robots, people programmed the robots with their memories, after that, the humans died out.

“ So me being here and the times when I meet Ryoko its like a robot showing me an electrical broadcast of my final moments.”

Hiroshi becomes obsessed at the dissecting table and doesn’t want to leave, the teacher becomes more and more concerned about his behaviour, and the other students distance themselves from him. Hiroshi cannot bear letting go of Ryoko’s physical body because he feels that it would stop the flood of memories and meetings he is having with her, through is memory Ryoko is alive again.

Eventually he is forced to release Ryoko’s body and he helps with the funeral arrangements, filling the coffin with Ikumi’s help. Finally he begins to find a sense of peace and decides to continue his medical studies not because everyone else around him wants it to happen, but because it is something he now would like to do.

In Vital, Tsukamoto moves from his previous themes of the city and our relationship to it and instead focuses on the body and consciousness. Where does our consciousness go when we die? Can consciousness exist outside of the body? Human consciousness depends strongly on memory; vital explores the frailty and the complexity of human memory. Hiroshi’s whole view of the world changes because he has nothing in his mind to compare it with and so he is interpreting everything he sees afresh. This is also a film about death and longing, how as human beings we want to hold on to our loved ones even though we know that clinging to the dead is a torturous route to take. We want to believe that their spirit lives on.

Tsukamoto’s usual fierce imagery and the inventive editing techniques he is famous for are applied in a much subtler way in Vital. This calmer vision fits perfectly with the story he is telling. Once again he uses colour imaginatively; the earthy reds, the cool blues, and the vivid green of the forest reflecting the changing emotions of the characters. He cleverly uses the movement of the human body and dance to show the contrast between life and the stillness of death. The perpetual sound of the rain through out the film feels like the endless grief that rests inside each of the people in the film.

In Vital we see a different side to Tsukamoto. He gives us a gentler more serene vision and yet this film retains all the power and expressiveness of his earlier films. Watching Vital is like stepping into another part of Tsukamoto’s unique mind, a peaceful but riveting odyssey.

Notes by Roseanna Lawrence © 2007 Roseanna.Lawrence@minadream.com