Looking around the internet earlier, spotted an original script for Shinya Tsukamoto's recent-ish feature 'Vital'. Sometimes titles for films are a little hard to grasp, to work out how they're connected to the story, and Tsukamoto is hardly particularly literal with his content either. Looking at the cover of this particular copy of the script [see small pop-up image], I see the title was once 'Elan Vital'.
Now, wonder if this clears things us, "An idea created by French philosopher Henri Bergson, élan vital is usually translated as "vital force". It is a hypothetical aetiological force thought to cause the evolution and development of organisms." and then, "élan vital in Deleuze's hands denotes a substance in which the distinction between organic and inorganic matter is indiscernible, and the emergence of life undecidable." [from Wikipedia]. Now it makes a little more sense, no?
Of course, the term is also oddly applied to a form of dance (a type of Flamenco dance apparently, remember there's a famous dance sequence in the film), as well as philosophically connected to the Maharaji, and has subsequently been used for various other things in reference to the original thoughts behind it all... interesting.
Now, although that dispells a little mystery, it also makes the ideas within the film a little clearer, perhaps too clear - and that's perhaps why Tsukamoto changed or abbreviated it.
hey, thanks for sharing. this is great information being as im such a fan of tsukamoto's films and have seen and enjoyed Vital.
it does in fact bring many different parts of the movie together into the context of one idea(elan vital) clearly. of course i knew that the movie was all constructed around one idea(asano's character's struggle), however, with this new knowledge i see shinya tsukamoto a bit differently...
not as any more or less creative, just with a different kind of respect(for the way that he drew great influence for 'elan vital' and put many elements of that term into his movie and still kept it looking original and as his own).