Vital
Director: Shinya Tsukamoto
Actors: Tadanobu Asano, Nami Tsukamoto, Kiki
Year Released: 2004
Genre: Drama
See Also: Tetsuo: The Iron Man, EM: Embalming, Angel Dust
I have to admit that the films of Shinya Tsukamoto have somehow managed to stay off my viewing schedule. Not because of any conscious decision, mind you. I saw Tetsuo: The Iron Man when it came out in the late '80s and was suitably impressed, and then filed it away in my mind with other "cult" films like Eraserhead and Holy Mountain. I've since picked up and looked at the backs of other Tsukamoto DVDs like A Snake of June, Bullet Ballet, and Vital, but I always end up putting them back in favor of something else. Maybe I just wasn't ready to be challenged like that again. My loss, because Vital is incredible and has me gagging to see the rest of Tsukamoto's body of work.
"Body of work" is an especially appropriate way to describe Tsukamoto's oeuvre because the man is obviously fascinated with the human form. Tetsuo saw a man's body transform into metal. Vital is a little more subtle yet no less body-obsessed; this time it's what's inside our bodies that gets the attention.
Hiroshi Takagi (Tadanobu Asano) has lost his memory in a car accident, which has also killed his girlfriend, the shockingly lithe Ryoko (dancer Nami Tsukamoto). He discovers that he was a medical student before the accident so he re-enters medical college, focusing on nothing else but studying. Izumi (Kiki), a fellow student with absolutely no business being that beautiful, begins to court Hiroshi but he's unresponsive, distracted by images in his head of Ryoko, scenes that are not quite memory, not quite waking life.
As it wouldn't be a Tsukamoto film without body work, we're soon accompanying Hiroshi into the dissection theater, where he begins cutting and exploring with gusto. Other students, still squeamish, hang back while Hiroshi cuts through skin, cracks apart ribs, and makes detailed anatomical drawings. The further into the body he gets, the more his thoughts turn to Ryoko and he begins to suspect that not only is the body he's dissecting Ryoko's but that she consciously placed herself there for him.
Despite the cracking bones and exposed muscle, Vital is ultimately less about the meat of our bodies than the less tangible elements locked within. Memory, the nature of consciousness, grief: these are the things that Tsukamoto is dissecting. For Hiroshi to finally return to himself and grieve, he must first completely explore Ryoko's ruined body. He cannot know himself until he has completely explored her, inside and out.
That this is all accomplished confidently and beautifully exposes Tsukamoto as the accomplished filmmaker that he is. Few films of late have been as visually exquisite as Vital, and it's this that pushes the film into the realm of the exceptional. The artistry of the cinematography asks us to contemplate the dissected human body not as something horrible but as something beautiful—as beautiful as memory, consciousness, and a love that endures after death.
Otaku Alert: Both female leads were first-time film actresses.
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