Vital (film)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Vital
Vital DVD cover
Directed by	Shinya Tsukamoto
Produced by	Shinya Tsukamoto
Written by	Shinya Tsukamoto
Starring	Tadanobu Asano Nami Tsukamoto
Music by	Chu Ishikawa
Distributed by	Gold View Company Ltd.
Release date(s)	2004 (Japan)
Running time	86 min.
Language	Japanese
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Vital is a Japanese film made in 2004. It was directed by Shinya Tsukamoto and stars Tadanobu Asano as Hiroshi Takagi, a man whose girlfriend dies and who loses his memory in a car accident.

[edit] Plot

Hiroshi (Tadanobu Asano) wakes up in a hospital room and realizes that he was in a serious car accident that caused the death of his girlfriend, Ryoko (Nami Tsukamoto), as well as the loss of his memory. While trying to regain his memory, one of the first clues that Hiroshi finds are his old medical textbooks that he studied prior to his accident. This gives him a renewed purpose in life and he delves forward into his medical school studies. One of his medical school classmates, Ikumi (Kiki), soon becomes infatuated with Hiroshi, although he does not return her interests initially. During a 4 month period, in which his class dissects human cadavers, Hiroshi realizes that the body that he is dissecting is the body of his former girlfriend, Ryoko, which causes more of Hiroshi’s memory to return. During this time, Hiroshi engages in a relationship with hisclassmate Ikumi, that helps him recall further memories of his ex girlfriend. Ikumi, meanwhile, feels jealous rage because of Hiroshi’s devotion in dissecting the cadaver of Ryoko, while Hiroshi is consumed in the quest to understand who that person was that died in his car and ultimately find out who he really is.

In the same way that the medical students dissected the cadavers to find the root cause of the person’s death, viewers of this film can take a similar approach to dissect the many layers of this film. “Vital” deals with heavy subjects, like the familiar existential question of the meaning of life, examines the relationship between the spiritual and physical self, and takes a stab at questioning our perception of what reality is. The characters are detached, and desensitized, and have a difficult time understanding reality and each other. As grandiose as those themes sound, or you just want to be entertained for 90 minutes, the film can be enjoyed as a “thriller” concerning Hiroshi’s amnesia and the love triangle that exists between himself, Ryoko, and Ikumi.

A clue that may help viewers out with the non-linear nature of the film : The intro of the film begins with close up shots of microbiological organisms then slams into a sequence of extremely loud symphonic music with hurky jerky shots of factories exhausting smoke into the air. Then we are introduced to the character of Hiroshi, awakening for the first time after the car accident. That same beginning sequence occurs again later in the film, signalling the second awakening of Hiroshi, this time, from his prior state of amnesia as well as his prior detachment from life.

[edit] External links

• Review of Vital at Lunapark6.com
• Vital at the Internet Movie Database

Japanese Cinema
Films directed by Shinya Tsukamoto
1980s	Tetsuo: The Iron Man
1990s	Hiruko the Goblin | Tetsuo II: Body Hammer | Tokyo Fist | Bullet Ballet | Gemini
2000s	A Snake of June | Vital | Female | Haze | Nightmare Detective