In the Grip of Grief: Epistemic Impotence and the Materiality of Mourning in Shinya Tsukamoto’s Vital

When someone close to us dies, we usually say that we are with them ‘in our thoughts’ or that they remain alive in our minds. The film Vital (Shinya Tsukamoto, Japan, 2004) challenges this disembodied view of grief by posing the following question: what would grief be like if we could keep the dead with us not only in our memories, but materially? The film provides an intriguing answer to this question, provided through a unique setting, that of a medical school dissection class. Despite the macabre setting, Tsukamoto’s aim is not to shock but to offer an intense meditation on the embodied nature of mourning.