Deconstructing
Vital to discover its meaning is a lot like dissecting a body in an
attempt to find the physical mechanisms of the soul. (There, I've
found my first incision.)
(caveat, somewhat
spoilery review)
Hiroshi awakens
from a coma following a car crash. He has no memory of his identity
or his life. His parents tell him as gently as they can that he had
burnt out, lost his vital spark. Once he had planned to be a doctor,
or an artist. Later he will leanr that he had a girlfriend, Ryoko, a
beautiful young woman with a tattoo of a blue bird on her arm. She
was in the crash and died soon after.
Inspired by one of
his old med school textbooks, Hiroshi re-enrolls and thus acquires a
pathology class assignment and a new girlfriend. With the new
girlfriend, Ikumi, he fails to connect emotionally. In contrast,
his studies light up his mind. The class will examining four
cadavers over the course of four months. The one assigned to Hiroshi
has a tattoo of a blue bird on her arm.
Shinya Tsukamoto's
career to date had been a series of meditations on reconciling the
organic physicality of the body with the soul-crushing artificiality
of its modern city home. Vital marks a radical advance in his
vision. The movie begins with shots of a zombified Hiroshi in the
city, shot with cold blue color timing. This will be familiar to
anyone who knows the director's work. From there, though, the movie
takes an unexpected turn inward, toward spirituality. This is a new
theme for Tsukamoto but a natural one given the humanism inherent in
his previous work, especially the journey of conscience made by the
doctor in Gemini.
Hiroshi begins to
recover memories of Ryoko...except that some of them don't feel like
memories, or dreams. Turning to her grieving parents, he learns that
Ryoko had lost her own essence of life, the two had shared that one
thing in common. For example, she had never danced. When Hiroshi
imagines he is with her, she dances. She smiles, she laughs...and
when he says it's time to go home, she weeps in panic. When they are
together, it is in on unspoiled beaches in verdant locales, unlike
anything in Hiroshi's day-to-day life. Are these memories? Is he
imagining these moments? Or is it possible that he shares a link
with Ryoko's spirit after her death that cannot be separated by the
bounds of body? Ryoko says that she doesn't feel real anymore, like
her existence has become a dream reality.
There is a central
image in Vital that I think marks the whole film. Hiroshi meets
Ryoko at an abandoned building Clearly visible surrounding the ruins
is that lush verdant paradise. Within the building is a massive
chunk of earth and rock: nature both within and without the body.
It's an image straight out of Tarkovsky.
This isn't the
first time Tsukamoto had gone green, but it's his most effective use
of natural setting so far. These scenes are colorful warm, sensual,
flowing with ease and comfort, solace and joy. Life. The director
has also opted for a more naturalisitc depiction of Tokyo: though
still cold and blue, it is no longer the exaggerated sterile
dystopia of earlier films...just dreary. It's clearly inhabited by
life and the attendant decay. Likewise, the med school setting is in
a constant cold and sickly green light. Breaking this up, we often
see Hiroshi bathed in red light when he's immersing in inner turmoil.
Some of Tsukamoto's signature freneticism is on display, like
handheld shots of smokestacks or Ryoko dancing, but they appear in
rare bursts braking out of a repressed funk. Chu Ishikawa gifts the
film with tender quietude, seldom breaking into industrial beats.
There are
extensive scenes of dissections in which Tsukamoto can indulge his
own background in illustrative art and a flirtation with wanting to
become a doctor...for some of us, not easy to watch. To be honest,
I'm plenty squeamish. It helps that Tsukamoto has decided to render
his bodies in plastic, to look like physical manifestations of the
beautiful anatomical renderings done in pencil – there's not a hint
of gooeyness, of bodily fluids. Well – not visually, anyway. One
scene has a memorable upkeep of sploshy sounds as Hiroshi works. We
watch Hiroshi, Ikumi watches Hiroshi, Hiiroshi has eyes only for
Ryoko's body.
Ikumi has a story,
though it isn't the central one. The MFM triangle that usually forms
the structure of a Tsukamoto movie is inverted for a FMF formation,
but it isn't one of equal sides. Ikumi at least has more spark
inside her than Hiroshi does, but it is on danger of going out –
the suicide of a professor she's been intimate with leaves her
unmoved, and she discusses her lack of response as if unsure whether
to be concerned for herself. I'm still studying her story to figure
out its place in the story. To be honest, this is one of the
director's movies I visit least though I feel it's among his best.
Vital is a movie informed by the process of grieving, a search for
solace and closure I'm too close to. It is a movie that seeks not
joy but peace. For Tsukamoto, it's exploratory surgery.
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