Vital (2004) User Reviews

Brief review

[mononoke1 · 8/10 · 5 November 2004]

After the surrealness of the Tetsuo films and the blue filters and voyeurism of Snake of June, I was not sure where Tsukamoto would go with this film. I saw it as part of the London FIlm Festival and it was one of my favourite films.

The story is of a Hiroshi (Asano Tadanobu) suffering from amnesia (as a result of a car crash in which his girlfriend dies) slowly regaining his memory through performing an autopsy on her. It raises questions on the nature of the self and how mutable it is.

For example, Hiroshi was pressured in to becoming a medical student, but he rebelled and became a drifter. After the crash he loses his recent memory, but he is inexplicably drawn to study medicine. Is this the call of his nature or a way of healing? Once the trauma's of teenage years are stripped away and we return to the core of the self before social conditioning steps in, are we more innocent or closer to what we can become? All this may sound very deep, but this film is all about childhood/innocence and the self in my opinion.

Pretty different from the other three films mentioned above, but still has lots of blue/grey filters and an extremely acute sense of sound. Some of the autopsy scenes have some wonderful slurping noises and tension that really set me on edge.

Weird, Original and Fascinating

[claudio_carvalho · 7/10 · 10 November 2006]

After a tragic car accident where his girlfriend Ryôko Ooyama (Nami Tsukamoto) died, Hiroshi Takagi (Tadanobu Asano) suffers amnesia with his memories completely blanked. When he sees a book about dissection, he decides to join the medical school with the support of his parents. In the dissection class, his group participates of the autopsy of a young woman, and while cutting apart the tissue, he partially recalls his accident. Later, when he sees a tattoo in the arm of the corpse, he discloses that she was his girlfriend and becomes obsessed to go further in the examination of the body.

This is the first work of director Shinya Tsukamoto that I have had the chance to watch, and I liked very much what I saw. This weird, original and fascinating story is disclosed in an adequate pace and supported by wonderful work of camera and lighting. The central lead cast trio, with Tadanobu Asano, Nami Tsukamoto and Kiki, together with the supportive cast, have also great performances. I intend to see this movie again in a near future, since I saw a DVD spoken in Japanese with English subtitles and therefore I may have missed details on the magnificent image. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Not Available"

Unexpected Deep Feelings From Tsukamoto

[jzappa · 8/10 · 16 July 2007]

Vital contains a single scene of such true, deep, tearjerking, aching love that despite all of its sleepy subtleties, it is truly great cinema. This scene makes you cry and relate to it, and only one who's ever been in deep, heavy, painful love with someone can watch it and understand what I mean. It's such stirring drama in one shot lasting about 5 minutes between two people, and you want that scene to last forever. I haven't felt any kind of emotion like that from a movie in God knows how long.

There isn't much else to say about this film. Somehow, Tsukamoto has made a film so powerful based on one scene that is more emotional and moving than any work I've seen in nearly a year from many much much less dry filmmakers.

odd contemplation of life and death

[cherold · 6/10 · 11 August 2008]

I think whoever listed this as a "thriller" was going by the plot description rather than the actual film, in which an amnesiac medical student spends several months dissecting his ex-girlfriend at the University. The student is taciturn, is followed around by another, infatuated medical student, and because to have memories of his ex. And that's pretty much the movie. It is deliberately paced and at times purposely opaque.

The director has at times a film students fondness for meaningless composition, notably in an early scene in which the students parents stand perfectly still and converse. This sort of statues-holding-deadpan-conversations work well in Hal Hartley movies, but they feel a bit pretentious without Hartley's humor. The opening jittery camera-work also seems like something a film student would do. This sort of thing put me off, but the movie did generally keep my interest, becoming slightly more involving and less pretentious as it progressed, and in the end I feel okay about sitting through it, although I can't say I'd give it a strong recommendation.

Slow, weird, something that needs to be seen more than once.

[Proud_Canadian · 11 November 2004]

Vital is a Japanese film about a man who was in a car accident and wakes up with amnesia. He goes home with his parents and slowly begins to get flashes of his life before the accident. He finds a stack of medical books in a storage space in his room and remembers that he was scheduled to go to medical school. He takes the exam and enters medical school. He meets another student and she becomes interested in him. He moves out of his parent's home into a dingy apartment close to the school. As time passes he remembers he had a lover and that he was expected to go into med school but he didn't want to. He remembers she was in the car with him when the accident happened. Soon he begins the dissection part of the anatomy course. He realizes that the body is that of his dead lover and he is tormented by this knowledge. He seeks out his dead lover's parents because he can't see this as just being coincidence. Eventually he comes to terms with everything. It's a weird film in parts. Slow and the lead character hardly speaks but says so much with his eyes. Tadanobu Asano plays the lead character and he is such a chameleon. However, this is a film that needs to be watched more than once because there are several layers to the film. I liked it but didn't get it. I would rate it 6.5-7/10.

not a date film

[Supergrass · 7/10 · 8 July 2005]

as usual, tadanobu asano provides a subtly seizing performance as a medical student who returns to school from a car accident that killed his gf (an extremely attractive yet horrible dancer). the med student has lost some of his memory, but is searching for answers which arrives in the form of flashbacks. during an autopsy, he discovers that his cadaver is his former gf, and he mentally struggles to regain his composure during a surreal and trippy ride in his mind.

unlike some of the director's earlier works, this film does not spazz out with an inordinate amount of guitar fuzz and headache inducing images (but there are still some bizarre images of smokestacks integrated with migraine inducing punk rock for a few fleeting moments). instead, the film focus on the medical student's more subtle descent into confusion and then enlightenment as he struggles to regain his memory and make peace with himself.

in the midst of the med students flashbacks, another sexually bizarre med student (another extremely attractive woman) courts tadanobu.

if you're squeamish and wouldn't watch HBO's "autopsy" program, then i would not suggest this movie to you.

Quieter Tsukamoto cuts it on a different level

[gmwhite · 9/10 · 20 January 2006]

Having seen Tsukamoto's Tetsuo films, Bullet Ballet and Tokyo Fist, I was initially taken aback by how restrained the presentation of this film was. There is very little of the frantic camera-movement and head-pounding sound of these films. And yet, the same intensity is there, quietly boiling away.

The story revolves around Takagi, ex-medical student, who has woken from a coma. Though he remembers nothing, he is informed that his girlfriend died in the car crash. He walks around in a complete daze until happening upon some of his old textbooks. He becomes interested in medicine again and returns to med-school. Though still amnesiac, and visually far from 'firing on all cylinders', he does brilliantly in his studies, until confronted, during a dissection course, with the cadaver of his girlfriend Ryoko.

*** Detailed discussion of plot points follows ***

Before long, colourful visions of Ryoko and his time with her occur to him, often when he has blacked out in a game of strangulation with Kiki (a female student who is interested in him), a game which, it seems, he also used to play with Ryoko.

Pointedly, however, these vivid visions seem to bear little relevance to the real Ryoko who, rather than a vivacious dancer had, in her grieving father's words, lost the light from her eyes years before, sometime in high-school. As the dissections - and visions - continue, Takagi reconstructs (or imagines) his time with Ryoko.

For a film set largely in a dissection room, there is, however, very little actual gore. The director's intentions evidently lay elsewhere. Like his previous films, and also echoing one of Cronenberg's obsessions, the significance of flesh, of brute matter, is a question he returns to. Takagi's memories seem less than real (and they are filmed in such vibrant colour that they do seem too intense or too beautiful to be real). The only reality he can be sure of is the cadaver he is dissecting, piece by piece, and sketching in detail as a personal record.

Other elements in the plot, however, lead one to question this reality also. Takagi, his face shrouded in long hair, barely utters more than grunts and looks as if still in a trance, and yet he is doing brilliantly in medical school. In one scene where all his classmates are wearing face masks, he alone appears uncovered. Other details also separate him from his classmates. Is it merely because of his amnesia and his obsession with Ryoko, or has he changed in other ways as well? Incidentally, his colleague and would-be girlfriend Kiki, is also quite disturbed by the dissection. She seems to play a role counterpointing, or paralleling that of the dead Ryoko, and her exact significance is something that demands thinking upon. I'm not suggesting that these are 'clues' to a real reading of the film, only that they are useful symbols for evaluating the characters, their moods, actions and motives.

*** Detailed discussion of plot ended ***

The photography was as brilliant as usual, with some superlative outdoor scenes, as well as blue and red filters it other shots. Tsukamoto somehow manages to make images that are immensely watchable, that just draw one's attention to them.

As for the actors, Tadanobu Asano had relatively little to do besides brooding and wielding dissection tools. The female leads playing Kiki and Ryoko both did well, though they too were relatively untaxed in the acting department. As for the rest of the cast, the fathers of Ryoko and of Takagi stood out, humanising their roles even though of secondary importance. In fact, one might even suggest that the main actors were too close to the central enigma of the story to be fully developed as characters apart from it. The secondary roles, on the other hand, had more latitude to develop as people.

I'd recommend this film to anyone already interested in Tsukamoto's growing body of work, or even to those who may have been put off by his louder and frantic works, but might be open to this quieter brand of intensity. Part story of loss, part philosophical inquiry into the nature of the flesh and the significance of memory, this film holds one's attention throughout and is not easily forgotten.

Not quite there yet...

[therealmusashi · 6/10 · 29 July 2005]

I was mostly disappointed with this film. I'm a fan of Tsukamoto's other work, and while this film indicates his growth as a director, and has a strong cast, I felt it had issues with pacing, and a pretty dissatisfying ending.

Asano Tadanobu, normally an engaging lead, seems to be coasting through this film, brooding, mainly. Of course, maybe that's how his character was written, but I found myself wondering when it would pick up in several places and unable to identify with him.

Kunimura Jun is wonderfully powerful as Ryoko's father, and I wound up wishing he was more of a central character. I also felt Ittoku Kishibe, who can conjure a truly menacing screen presence, was rather wasted as Dr. Kashiwabuchi.

There are some interesting philosophical questions raised, but they are never really addressed or explored fully. I guess I'm also getting tired of the "I don't know whether I'm dreaming or awake" cliché in many movies in this genre. Plus, it's a little ham-fisted to have a character just come out and say that.

Vital contains a few interesting scenes involving a dance, and some of Tsukamoto's signature music video-style strangeness in a few places, but in summary, a slow, dark film with no real scares or thrills.

beautiful and very intoxicating

[kmevy · 10/10 · 13 September 2006]

This film really gave me an impression and was for myself a very memorable experience.

Like many others i was also quite surprised about the emotional and gentle character of this film. Before starting to watch i prepared myself for something extreme and uncompromising like i experienced in many Shinya Tsukamoto's films. But that is a good thing for this film; making it possible to reach a broader audience. And it definitely deserves it.

Technically this film is superb. Lighting and camera were excellent .. and the colors ... Sound design and music weren't that demonstrative but still played, in a subtle way, an important role. Acting was also impressive. Tadanobu Asano, one of my favorite actor since Ichi the killer, was a perfect fit. Nami Tsukamoto was very scary, in a good way ;). But she doesn't have a record at IMDb yet. I wonder why .. her acting was very promising. And letting Kiki perform modern dance was for the atmosphere and art-style a very good idea.

To sum the story up, by leaving all the artful details behind, you could say it is about the painful yearning for the loved one. This was extremely good implemented. Just everything, art, sound and acting supported the presentation of this yearning.

This is one of those films you don't simply watch. You have to experience them.

Vital viewing for genre fans or a confusing art-house offering?

[DVD_Connoisseur · 6/10 · 26 October 2007]

I normally watch films with no expectations or anticipation of what they have to offer but I wish I'd done some background reading on "Vital" before I settled down to view it. Expecting a horror film, I was left disappointed. Described as a thriller, I didn't find "Vital" particularly thrilling or attention grabbing.

While the film is beautifully shot, the movie relies on mood to keep the viewer engaged with what is unrolling on the screen. In the end, though, it's a somewhat confusing meditation on death and left me feeling more than a little frustrated.

6 out of 10. This is a stylish entry in Asian cinema but it lacks substance. I've no doubt it will delight some viewers but it will frustrate in equal measure.

Obscure, confusing but entertaining

[darkforcepet · 5/10 · 29 August 2005]

This movie was a strange experience, I started watching what I thought was a horror movie and ended up watching a tough "hard to swallow drama".

This movie should get, at least, 7 stars for originality! I never saw anything like it. The idea was genuine, the characters were creative and the set was very appropriate and perfectly matched every scene. It has a great photography, high quality images with nice shooting angles helping and transmitting the feelings and emotions connected with each character. From the technical point of view the only inferior element was the soundtrack, which didn't quite caught my ear.

However, the plot and its progression is a total different subject! I had a hard time understanding where the flashbacks ended and started and this movie has lots of them! Then, the main character's individuality was very peculiar, I mean, too peculiar, it just turned my head around and made it very hard to understand what was going on, what was he feeling and, thus, where the movie was going... Depressive thoughts and activities are splattered all over the movie, the main character has a hard time distinguishing reality, imagination, memories and dreams, and so do we...

From a subjective point of view, the movies theme was too depressing and it's just not my style. From an objective point of view, the plot could have been delivered in a more proper way.

In spite of all flaws, the movie did entertain me and I couldn't leave my sofa until I knew how this confusing and strange movie would end.

another beautiful work of art from Tsukamoto

[tbyrne4 · 10/10 · 17 September 2006]

It seems the majority of people who see Shinya Tsukamoto films are people who are fans of his to begin with. I am definitely a fan and have seen almost all his films - "Bullet Ballet", "A Snake of June", "Tokyo Fist", "Tetsuo 1&2". Tsukamoto is one of my favorite directors. In my opinion, he towers above most other film makers. His style is totally unconventional and he tends to make movies that can't easily be categorized, so fan-boy types tend to ignore him as overly "artsy", while lovers of more lush, slow-moving Japanese films tend to see him as overly frenetic and violent. Plot and linear narrative is typically incidental in favor of emotional catharsis (his films rarely wrap themselves up neatly, if at all - which can infuriate people). He tends to find a subject and fetishize it (guns in "Bullet Ballet", voyerism in "A Snake of June", metal and machinery in "Tetsuo", physical strength in "Tokyo Fist") rather than follow a standard "he did this, she did that" plot thread.

I would call "Vital" his warmest film to date. This is clearly a more toned down and relaxed Tsukamoto. Perhaps a sign of the director's move toward middle-age. There is very little of the manic hand-held camera work and thundering music from his earlier films. It's mostly static, beautifully framed images of non-moving people. Almost like paintings. Gone also is the furious video scramble editing technique that was taken to such wild extremes in "Bullet Ballet" and "Tetsuo".

The plot involves a young man recovering from amnesia after a car accident, who enters med school only to find the first cadaver he dissects is his old girlfriend (who died in the car crash). The memories start coming back to him, but the young med student (having no memory or reference point for the memories) instead begins to treat them as daydreams, and possible realities.

It sounds creepier than it actually is. The film is basically a love story, and quite a wistful one at that.

Highly recommended.

Re-VITAL-ize your dead girlfriend!

[Coventry · 6/10 · 8 December 2006]

Not being the biggest fan of Shinya Tsukamoto's acclaimed cult favorites "Tetsuo" & "Tetsuo II", I was rather careful with my anticipations towards "Vital"; of which the DVD-box announces it as the director's latest masterpiece. Well it ain't no masterpiece, but it's definitely a compelling and suspense-packed thriller that I liked a whole lot better than the boisterous Tetsuo-films. Especially the basic story ideas are very ingenious and even original! The plot centers on the young Hiroshi Takagi who slowly recovers from a dramatic car accident in which his lost his whole memory and youthful spirit. The sight of a book about surgery suddenly makes him decide to study medicines, where he becomes somewhat of a strange outcast but with a natural talent to dissect corpses. Bit by bit his memory returns and Hiroshi comes to the painful establishment that he's performing an autopsy on his former girlfriend Ryôko, who died in the same accident and put her body at the disposal of the medical faculty. My main problem with "Vital" was that it quickly got tedious once Hiroshi realizes whose corpse he hacks up and - especially near the end - Tsukamoto inserts a lot of irrelevant dream sequences and images of scenic beauty. It actually would be a lot more effective and horrific as a short movie, I think. It's a fairly short film now (86 min.) but it would have been so much better as a part of trilogy like, say, "Three…Extremes" and exclusively focusing on Hiroshi's amnesia. Tsukamoto is clearly a gifted director who also knows a thing or two about cinematography. "Vital" is often beautiful to look at and loaded with symbolism. Worth watching.

Deeper-and-Deeper, Tsukamoto Only Gets-Better

[myboigie · 9/10 · 22 August 2006]

Shinya Tsukamoto has to be one of the greatest living-directors of our time. He is absolutely uncompromising in his visions, and is one of the very few-directors who actually owns his films, rejecting most outside-financing. The results are always spectacular, and undiluted by the money people who constantly ruin the projects they fund. It must be a heavy-burden to shoulder all of the praise and the blame, as Tsukamoto often acts as producer, writer, actor, cinematographer (as with his "Bullet Ballet"), and even film-editor. The man is unstoppable, like many of his film-protagonists, and he is a testament to the power of discipline. Even Takashi Miike admits he's an admirer and will never top Tsukamoto.

This tale was created entirely by Tsukamoto, and certainly has elements of autobiography to it, and he continues his theme of the desensitizing-nature of urban life in all its mind-numbing routines. Again, his characters are attempting to punch-through the drudgery to a more-fulfilling life. Sometimes they succeed. The story concerns a medical student named Hiroshi who has suffered amnesia in a car-accident. His lover was killed in this accident. He returns to live-with his parents, who he doesn't remember--in-fact, he has forgotten his past entirely. One day, he discovers one of his old anatomy-textbooks hidden-away, and decides to return to medical school. He also finds many drawings he did before the accident. Over-time, it becomes clear that he once wanted to be an artist, and felt-pressured by his parents to be a doctor. Returning to medical school, Hiroshi rapidly-excels and reaches the dissection-stage of his education. There is a problem--the cadaver is his lover...

This is lyrical-art, nothing-less. The makeup of the cadavers is astonishing, and was done with plastic-molding and latex. It looks entirely-real. As Hiroshi delves-deeper into the body of his dead-lover, he remembers more-and-more of what happened before the accident. So, if you like grue and gore, you'll like THAT part of this film, just don't expect viscera and fluids everywhere. Vital is more cerebral than that, and this is not a gorefest, there is meaning to this. There is a confrontation-with-mortality here that Americans are incapable of creating in our culture, but it also says that the dead speak to us. We just never listen. If I tell you more, it will only ruin your curiosity and the viewing-experience, which is best experienced virginal. This is a story of discovery, and identity. It is the essence of being-human, and being empathetic and caring. It also celebrates the beauty of the human-body in ways I never imagined, a visual-feast.

The Tartan DVD couldn't be any-better. The image-quality is superb, as is the audio (DTS, and stereo-versions are very-active). While this is a film that lasts a mere 80-minutes, it is a very full-experience, and the added-features on the DVD are great, including an audio-commentary by Miike and Tsukamotot-scholar, Tom Mes, interviews, and more. So, gorehounds, this is a beautiful film with some very deep-meaning about what it is to be human and caring. Correct, gorehounds will be bored, but who cares? This is high-art by a totally independent filmmaker, it doesn't get much-better than this.

One of my favorite romances, this is very unique

[ebossert · 10/10 · 3 March 2016]

Vital is arguably Shiny Tsukamoto's best movie, and one of the most resoundingly beautiful films I have ever seen. This is an all-time favorite for me.

This film follows a young man whose girlfriend was killed in the same car accident that caused his loss of memory. He soon enrolls in medical school and signs up for a dissection class to study the human body. Outside of class he begins to see his dead girlfriend in his dreams, but he is confused as to whether they are dreams, memories, or supernatural visitations. So there are lots of interesting themes at work here, and Tsukamoto plays with all of them while at the same time mirroring the beauty of biology. And how many romance movies can think of that emphasize the beauty of biology? There are not many films like this in existence.

One major positive of this film is the direction, lighting, framing of shots, and cinematography – which are all fantastic. Every frame is mesmerizing in its color scheme and visuals. For example, there's a lot of orange used near the beginning, but it later shifts towards a blue scheme that supplements the rainy environments. It reminded me a lot of Christopher Doyle's cinematography (which can be seen in films such as "In the Mood for Love" and "Hero"). Although Doyle did not do the cinematography for Vital, the visuals have the same craftsmanship and impact. Coupled with a hypnotic score, they really enhance the feel of dreams and memories.

The main actor here is Tadonobu Asano, who is mega popular and you've probably seen him in films such as Ichi the Killer and Survive Style 5. He's perfectly cast here as a rather gloomy fellow who is reserved but also suffering mentally and emotionally under the surface.

From what I've said thus far, this may seem like a somewhat downbeat film, but I feel that this is a heavily romantic experience, and this is most strongly presented during the dream sequences because this couples' relationship was prematurely taken away from them and these brief moments are the only times they get to spend together – if they're actual supernatural visitations. Remember, they could simply be dreams or memories. Regardless, the dream sequences are very memorable, my favorite of which occurs on a beach and incorporates a fairly passionate dance performance.

One fact that was brought to my attention while reading Tom Mes' book "Iron Man: The Cinema of Shinya Tsukamoto" (a fantastic book, by the way, that I highly recommend), was that Tsukamoto intentionally downplayed the grotesque aspects of dissection in favor of a focus on artistry and beauty. This is an excellent strategy when making a romance film. If you're a viewer who is squeamish about dissection scenes, you really have nothing to worry about. The majority of the dissections are shown via hand-drawn sketches, which are really cool. If you've seen diagrams within biology textbooks, you have an idea of what you're in for, but the sketches they show in Vital are practically artworks. When to see them, you think to yourself "Man, the interworkings of the human body are a very beautiful thing." It's no surprise that Tsukamoto found the work of Leonardo da Vinci as a major source of inspiration. So if you're scared of gore or violence, you can easily watch this. There are a handful of scenes where the exposed body is shown, but it's portrayed like a body is typically prepared for dissection in real life. So the "gore" aspect is practically neutered here.

Like many of Tsukamoto's films, Vital is a bit on the weird side and some scenes may be left to the viewer's interpretation – but that's the way this guy makes movies. You can always tell when you're watching a Tsukamoto film, even though he has made wildly different films throughout his career. Earlier in his career (late 80s and 90s) his films were very violent, but that began to change quite a bit during the late 90s. Vital is certainly one of Tsukamoto's most mellow films, but it has just as much impact as anything he's done before. This is great stuff, and a prime example of why I love this director so much.

A slow, subdued and poetic film about over-coming grief.

[ThreeSadTigers · 29 December 2007]

Shinya Tsukamoto is a director best known for his violent, hard-hitting and heavily industrial-influenced art-dramas, such as the 1988 cult-classic Tetsuo: The Iron Man and it's somewhat poorly received 1991 follow up Tetsuo II: Body Hammer. These films are placed alongside his two contemporary masterpieces, Tokyo Fist and A Snake of June. Whereas those films were fast, furious and hyper-kinetic affairs, punctuated by grainy cinematography, punch-drunk editing and a soundtrack of jarring industrial noise, Vital finds the maverick filmmaker in a slightly more poetic and philosophical mood; creating a slow and lingering film that looks at the notions of love and loss through the eyes of a central character trying to both understand and come to terms with the death of his free-spirited former lover.

As with much of Tsukamoto's work, the film is rich in visual symbolism and texture, with the opening scene disorientating us with a kaleidoscopic montage of four industrial chimney-stacks pumping smoke into an overcast sky. Later on, after enrolling in a medical course at his local college, our protagonist will witness four bodies being dissected, including, surprisingly enough, that of the central character's deceased love. This is the central arch of the story and the location where much of the film unfolds, with Tadanobu Asano's character Takagi piecing his life back together as he literally picks apart the body of his former lover and comes to terms with his own role in the loss of her life. As you can probably imagine from a story of this nature, the film is incredibly slow-moving and deliberately paced, with Tsukamoto juxtaposing the coldness of Takagi existence of continual study and cultural isolation with the rich, warm vibrancy found in that of his late girlfriend's wild and unfettered existence on an island paradise that may or may not exist only within the fragmented mind of Takagi himself.

The scenes of Takagi and his fellow medical students dissecting the rotting flesh and hollowed bones of the four symmetrically positioned corpses is sympathetically handled, with the director creating a mood of unease through the use of a sickly yellow lighting filter, so that the film manages to create an air of queasiness and uncertain anxiety without having to show anything too explicit. There are further examples of Tsukamoto using the lighting and cinematography to underpin the emotions of the character within other areas of the film, for example, the scenes in which Takagi works on his studies or reminisces about the ghosts of his life, pre-accident, are bathed in a cool blue that recalls the cold and clinical cinematography of A Snake of June, which again, brings out the sense of cold alienation central to the character's life. These colour-coded motifs are further juxtaposed by the bright and vividly beautiful colours found on the island that Takagi dreams of, recreating or reliving a brief moment of transcendence with a lover he'll never again reclaim.

Vital is quite an anomaly within Tsukamoto's career thus far; standing out a slower, more deliberate and more poetic work with the emphasis placed on human emotions as opposed clinical psychology. There are still the various recurring themes on display, for example, the obsession with the fragility and the limitations of the human body; something that has been explored and exploited throughout Tsukamoto's work from Tetsuo through to Tokyo Fist and beyond to Vital and A Snake of June. As I mentioned previously in this review, the pace of Vital is slow and deliberate throughout, whilst the overall tone of the film is dreamlike and filled with uncertain. Many will no doubt find it a little dull and perhaps even boring, but many others will perhaps appreciate the believable characterisations and the rich compassion and emotion that Tsukamoto brings to the script, especially when coupled with the captivating cinematography, evocative music and air of metaphysical mystery.

A love story.

[Bobhand · 10/10 · 28 December 2005]

Wow. This was an unbelievable film. I do so love this genre! Anyway, to me, Vital is a completely different way of telling a love story!

Hiroshi has awoken from a coma suffered after a near fatal car accident that has left him without a memory. He tries desperately to piece his life back together. We learn that he was accepted to medical school before the accident, but had decided not to go. After the coma, he ends up going to med school and does exceptionally well...until cadaver class. It is here that he learns that he is dissecting his True Love! He is consumed by her and his ever bettering memory, which gives up glimpses of his happiness with his lover. We see how perfect they were for each other and the audience can feel real lose with her death.

I loved the acting in this film. At the end, when Hiroshi escorts his love's coffin to be buried, I truly felt his pain and yes...almost shed a tear. It is a strange and twisted love story, but one that I enjoyed.

Vital

[Scarecrow-88 · 9/10 · 24 June 2007]

A troubled, enigmatic amnesiac, Hiroshi(Tadanobu Asano), who lost his memory and beloved Ryôko(Nami Tsukamoto)in an accidental car crash, discovers that the one he's assigned to dissect in his medical class is her! Ikumi(Kiki), whose adulterous lover and medical professor committed suicide after she rejected his love towards her, desires Hiroshi but finds that he is overwhelmed by Ryôko's memory. Ryôko's memory unravels in Hiroshi's mind as he continues to dissect, articulate on paper every vital organ, and study her..it seems that, through this type of thorough examination, he can feel emotionally whole. There's this place he goes where Ryôko exists(imagine an ideal, idyllic beach setting or inside a forest whose beautiful, lush trees stretch endlessly towards the sky for miles)that feels so real, but it's a fabrication he will have to return from. This unhealthy obsession develops which engulfs his life..he grows more and more distant from the outside world as Ryôko takes center stage. It seems that Hiroshi was partaking in a form of sexual strangulation with Ryôko that he now continues with Ikumi, but when doing such a dangerous thing he seems to travel to the place where he's the most happy..where Ryôko awaits and wishes for him to stay. Everyone around Hiroshi are disturbed at his obsession with Ryôko's body as he often continues his dissecting work into the night causing discomfort towards the students assigned to her(he often harasses them by staring, charging at them when they clown around, or causes intense pressure when they seem to mess up)and the professors who believe he's too attached. By the time the class is over, only Ikumi remains there and that's because she loves him in an unhealthy way..it's as if she is competing, and losing, with a dead woman clinging to the hope Hiroshi will snap out of it. The question is, how do you let go when you are that close to someone? When that spirit of someone feels and seems to real that you wish to stay right where they are, how can one truly escape that? When life outside of Ryôko doesn't even have that same passion and joy, why would Hiroshi wish to leave her side?

You know, this is a beautiful, challenging, and ultimately rewarding film about somehow letting go of the person you love when their memory comes rushing back to you. That overwhelming desire to hold them, love them, cherish them, and just cling them..I think, through this unusual and unique premise, that we experience those things through Hiroshi. Director Shinya Tsukamoto is quite multi-talented..he was in control of writing this very elusive work, editing it which wildly swings from reality into the fantasy created by the character Hiroshi, and beautifully photographing it. It's a stunning film, very moody and visually rich. The film does have very odd behavior by the central characters, mainly Hiroshi and Ikumi, who are dealing with their own obsessions and violent emotional tendencies and Tsukamoto doesn't hold back peering into their dementia. But, yet, despite their forays into the bizarre, this is still a very sad and effective tale of loss & acceptance that I found quite spellbinding. Very good performances from the male actors who played the fathers of Hiroshi and Ryôko, both deeply mournful of the loss of a young girl whose death was too soon.

Thanatos in Eros through medical anatomy and memory

[Polaris_DiB · 10/10 · 20 December 2009]

After a car crash that leads to the death of his girlfriend, a young medical student must regain the memories he's lost of her while dissecting her body in anatomy class, watched over by the careful scorn of a new love interest, the original girlfriend's father and dying mother, his own concerned parents, and the class's professor and students. With love scenes involving mutual erotic asphyxiation, dance and theatre added to a stylistic cinematic structure, and flash-backs, dream sequences, and flash forwards all given equivalent value with the same structural equivalent, Shinya Tsukamoto explores a rather direct territory of Eros and Thanatos while wrestling with history, memory, subconscious, and loss. Thematic quote du jour: "How can I compete with the perfect happiness of false memories?"

An interesting contextual aside, Tsukamoto's famous Tetsuo: The Iron Man also revolves, plot-wise, around a half-remembered car accident and the ripple-effect of relationships and memories it destroys. I haven't done enough research into Tsukamoto's life myself to know if there was a particularly horrific car accident he was involved in, but the usage is in fitting with his general themes between organism and technology, reflected in Tetsuo as a man slowly turning into a scrapheap and in Vital as a robot from the future experiencing an electrical surge of mankind's memories before being destroyed on the planet Mars, or the contrasting book-ending images in the movie itself of smokestacks at the beginning and rain and nature at the end.

As a final note for recommendation's sake, this movie is 85 minutes long and feels like 15.

Not Tsukamoto's best work, but still quite good

[zetes · 9/10 · 27 February 2006]

It's his least wild, though it does have a certain sense of weirdness to it. The story involves a medical student (Ichi the Killer's Tadanobu Asano) who experiences a bout of amnesia after a car accident. When he re-enrolls in school, he finds himself in a dissection class taking apart his former girlfriend, who was in the passenger seat during the accident. There's a subtext of necrophilia, which Tsukamoto explores in the film's first half. But he ends up veering away from any taboos and into more conventional drama. Actually, it's still pretty unconventional. It gets a bit too ponderous in the second half, and there are some scenes that drag. But Tsukamoto captures some brilliant images, and his infamous editing style pops up frequently, and is put to great use. There are some truly wonderful sequences. I especially loved all the sequences where the protagonist visits his dead lover in a fantasy landscape. The film ends beautifully. I really liked Asano's two female co-stars, Nami Tsukamoto (not sure if she's any relation to the director) and Kiki. Both are gorgeous, though each of them could eat the occasional burger. They're absolutely skeletal. Thank God for companies like Tartan Asian Extreme. This DVD is an especially nice edition with quite a few worthwhile extras.

Artistic Expressions, Philosophical Depth and Excellent Acting Performances

[kluseba · 8/10 · 20 December 2021]

Vital is a profound Japanese psychological drama that oozes with atmosphere. Directed by veteran Tsukamoto Shinya, the man behind cult movies such as science-fiction horror movie Tetsuo: The Iron Man, dramatic action thriller Tokyo Fist and dramatic mystery movie A Snake of June, this film stars charismatic Asano Tadanobu, known for his involvement in critically acclaimed films such as Ichi the Killer and The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi, as well as two strong female lead actresses with actress, architect and model Kiki and professional ballet dancer Tsukamoto Nami.

The story revolves around a young man who has had a car accident and awakens in a hospital without remembering what has happened and who he is. His family gradually nurses him back to health when the young man decides to join a medical school. He becomes one of the very best students along with an ambitious female student who develops an obsessive love interest in him. Things however take a sinister turn when the students perform autopsies on recently deceased people as the young man recognizes his corpse as his former girlfriend. Painful memories soon come back haunting the unstable student as he realizes that the woman died in that fateful car accident. With the help of his parents, the mourning family of his former girlfriend and the female student who observes his every move, the young student will have to be strong to remember the most sinister memories of his life, grieve his lover's passing and ultimately overcome her tragic demise.

This movie has at times been advertised as a thriller or even as a horror movie but that's certainly not what it is. The only creepy elements in this film are the constantly gloomy atmosphere that however also shows that there is always hope in despair and the dissection scenes of the corpses that are slightly graphic but never exaggerated. This film convinces with difficult topics such as grief, guilt and obsession that are treated with care, empathy and intellect. This movie is essentially a wonderful romance that shows that love can even survive death. The film has several artistic and surreal scenes involving wonderful drawings and haunting dream sequences. The acting performances are absolutely stellar because they avoid lengthy dialogues and rather focus on body language, dance choreographies and facial expressions. The movie's soundtrack blends in perfectly and the title song Blue Bird by renowned Japanese pop and folk singer Cocco is a timeless masterpiece.

At the end of the day, Vital is a slow-paced drama with artistic expressions, philosophical depth and excellent acting performances. This timeless movie has aged very well and deserves more attention and recognition. The slow-paced movie entices you with its mysterious atmosphere from start to finish and won't let you go. Its unique trademarks will even make you want to revisit this brilliant movie. Anyone interested in gloomy dramas with depth should give this overlooked gem a fair try.

They say there is a world aside of what we perceive and comprehend

[ridi-arahan · 8/10 · 14 July 2020]

What worked:

• the movie is a beautiful piece of art, great in almost every aspect. What made the movie even more enjoyable is the convincing dissection setup and the genuiness of the dissection in the classroom setting. The movie is unique, raw and a hard watch for some viewers. Overall , the movie worked despite its length.

What did not work:

• camera movement; one this that made me dissatisfied is the camera movement which was done unnaturally making it hard to grasp the scenes. Maybe they were meant to be that way but some repeated shaking made some scenes hard to watch.

Final verdict: recommended

Neat j-horror drama

[IPreferEvidence · 8/10 · 23 July 2011]

Disturbing and creepy in a psychological way. Probably the most f****d up love story(spoiler?) I've ever watched and also a neat little mystery.

The acting is excellent especially Tadanobu Asano's and it makes the film very easy to watch and you also tend to care about the characters and to be genuinely interested in finding out the truth. Its really fun to see the story come together and solve the mystery.

I wouldn't say its that much of a horror film, its more of a drama but its definitely creepy and sometimes disgusting and I'd still define it as a Japanese horror film or a horror-drama. Its a horror film in the same way Der Todesking (The Death King) is.

Recommended for J-horror fans and anyone who wants some psychological creepiness.