In this blog post, I will naturally explore the plot, my impressions, and the core meaning of ‘My Love, Don’t Cross That River’.
Why did I analyze this film?
This film isn’t about other people’s stories; it’s the reality of my own family. While others may appear to lead vastly different lives on the surface, deep down, we are all living the same life. This film is filled with the warmth of humanity more than any other documentary, which is why it ranks among my personal favorites. There are many reasons for this, but I’ll briefly explain just a few. This film doesn’t feature beautiful or handsome actors. It is certainly not a breathless blockbuster packed with flashy spectacle. On the contrary, it flows at an extremely calm and slow pace from beginning to end, so it might feel boring to audiences accustomed only to fast-paced, stimulating entertainment. In today’s world, where late marriages, divorces, and even “gray divorces” are commonplace, and loneliness is on the rise, this film features an elderly couple whose daily life is so sweet and cozy it almost seems staged. Through subtle narrative devices, the film draws the audience deeper into the story, allowing it to touch people’s hearts all the more deeply. It makes one wonder: wouldn’t watching this film be even more moving when someone you want to spend your life with finally appears?
Summary
Tears flow endlessly from the grandmother’s parched eyes. These are tears of belated realization—tears of the greatness of a love that even death cannot separate. It is said that 89-year-old Grandmother Kang Gye-yeol and 98-year-old Grandfather Jo Byeong-man have lived together for 76 years. The love and time they’ve shared, accumulated over the years as deeply as the thick wrinkles on their faces, are truly touching. Though they are elderly with snow-white hair, the way they toss fallen leaves at each other when the leaves fall, throw snow at each other when it snows, and reminisce about the past to the sound of rain is unmistakably that of a couple in love. The grandfather, who gently blows on his wife’s sore knee, is the very image of a husband who cherishes her more than anyone else. When the grandfather, waking suddenly at dawn, gently strokes the face of his wife—who had finally fallen asleep after he kept her awake with his coughing—that moment perfectly captures the love he has cherished for her over countless years. Now, that beloved partner is about to cross the river first. Tears flow endlessly from the grandmother’s parched eyes. Perhaps it is because it feels like a reflection on our own lives—having passed through the golden years and now turning back on the path home—and because it feels like the image of our future selves that everyone cannot help but envision first. It is also a deep empathy for the inescapable, shared human fate we all face. After the rainy season passes, Grandpa’s beloved dog, “Kkomma,” passes away, and Grandpa begins to lose his strength little by little. Leaving behind the family’s heated arguments over the birth of the lone remaining puppy, “Gongsun-i,” and the arrangements for Grandma’s birthday celebration, Grandpa, who had been suffering from coughing fits every night, is laid to rest one winter day beneath a mound gently covered in snow. Unable to turn away from the grave of her late husband, Grandma collapses to the ground, sobbing, “How pitiful! What am I to do?!” Grandmother’s lament, “If not me, who will remember him…?” is imbued with her deep love for Grandfather. Though our lives are but fleeting moments that come and go, even within this human fate, we are told of a life where we live beautifully on this earth and are remembered beautifully by one another. In Grandmother’s memories, within that love, Grandfather will live on forever. The grandmother, who will soon follow him across the river, and the grandfather, who crossed it first. Their love is the most beautiful gift this land has to offer. The beginning and end of all living things—these things, which are so natural and obvious, are what truly move us deeply. And one more thing: this is the most common yet greatest lesson this film offers.
Story and Cinematography
I feel that using such a calm and simple cinematographic style—rather than flashy techniques—was the right choice for capturing the life and love of an elderly couple living in a quiet village in Hoengseong, Gangwon Province. I’m not sure what narrative structure the director had in mind when production first began, but since the story unfolded with the grandfather’s death—an event even the director could not have predicted—the film ended up dealing with tragic and dramatic material. Perhaps that is why the director’s caution and deliberation are evident in the film’s structure and editing. If the sudden death of “Little One” or the family conflicts had been portrayed more dramatically, or if the birth of “Gongsun-i’s” offspring and the grandfather’s declining health had been presented in stark contrast to his death as the climax, the narrative structure could likely have been far more sensational. However, this film simply shows the natural passage of time through autumn, winter, spring, and summer, striving to capture the years the couple spent together as plainly as possible. The director rarely uses the common dissolve effect when transitioning between sequences. This means artificial editing was excluded as much as possible. I believe this simple structure is the result of the director’s careful deliberation and stubborn determination to resist the temptation of “editing.” And that made me feel, throughout the film, as though I were not merely watching a movie, but rather peering into the life, love, death, and parting of an elderly couple. The biggest reason the film garnered attention despite its simple, chronological structure—without such filming techniques—is likely because it is a documentary based on a true story. Furthermore, I believe the reason this documentary was so popular is that the director intentionally placed devices throughout the film to help the audience immerse themselves more deeply in the story and respond emotionally.
Dialogue from the film
To the grandfather who picked her favorite flower, the grandmother pins the flower behind her ear and says, “Oh, how lovely. “You look so handsome. I’ve aged a lot, but you haven’t,” she says, speaking words as sweet as the innocent love between a young boy and girl. The secret to the grandfather, who is loved by his wife in this way, is his thoughtfulness. The grandmother praises him, saying, “You’ve never once complained that the food was bad, even after all these years.” It would be wonderful if the film only showed the couple’s affectionate, happy moments, but eventually, as the grandmother prepares to say goodbye to her ailing husband, she delivers a line that brings tears to the audience’s eyes. While burning his clothes, she says, “They say you have to burn the clothes he wore to make them fit him properly. “Right now, I’m just burning the clothes you usually wore. If you pass away now, I’ll burn the clean ones later. If I burn them all at once, they’ll be too heavy—what am I to do?” She continued, her eyes reddening with sorrow: “Grandpa, please live just three more months. If you could just live three more months like this, how happy I would be. How wonderful it would be to hold your hand and go together like that.”
Furthermore, the couple—who had lost six children in their youth—touched the hearts of listeners when they said to each other, “Whichever of us goes first, let’s pass on our underwear to the children.” Eventually, as she burned the remaining clothes of her husband, who had passed away first, the grandmother lamented, “Grandpa wouldn’t even know if these were winter or summer clothes if I didn’t take care of him. “I feel so sorry for my husband. If not me, who will remember him?” she lamented, adding profound sorrow to the film.
Immersive Devices Explored Through Scene Analysis
A Very Passive Camera
In this film, the camera simply watches silently as the characters speak for themselves and confess their feelings. Here and there, the grandmother’s voice flows over the screen—sometimes like a soliloquy, sometimes as if speaking to the grandfather, and sometimes as if answering a question—along with the grandfather’s playful banter and singing. From the beginning to the end of the film, not a single word of narration explaining or commenting on the situation from anyone other than the elderly couple is heard. Although waltz-style background music is occasionally interjected, the film mostly preserves the raw sounds of the setting—such as the gurgling of a stream or the crackling of a wood fire—and layers the grandmother’s voice over them to enhance the sense of presence. Even the subtitles serve solely as a means to transcribe the dialogue of the grandfather and grandmother, whose speech is heavily accented and pronounced imprecisely. Because the camera and the director behind it are so passive, the audience is drawn to focus more intently on the figures captured by the lens.
Narrator
At first glance, one might assume that both the grandfather and grandmother are the protagonists of this documentary. However, I believe that the true protagonist—the narrator designated by the director, even if not prominently featured—was the grandmother alone, from beginning to end. In the film, the grandfather does not speak very much. His lines consist mostly of answering the grandmother’s questions, and it is generally the grandmother who takes on the role of the narrator—that is, the protagonist. Because the storyteller is subtly yet clearly defined as a single person, the audience becomes more immersed in the grandmother’s situation and naturally delves deeper into her emotional journey.
Background
The film conveys a sense of the seasons and the passage of time through its backgrounds: for instance, showing thick snow piled on the eaves before cutting to an elderly couple having a snowball fight, or showing a stream where the ice has melted and frogs are swimming, followed by a shot of the grandmother washing spring greens. The film also conveys the themes of the dialogue through visual cues, such as showing a close-up of a bird chirping on a tree branch while overlaying the grandmother’s voice saying, “If I were reborn, I would want to be a bird.” Furthermore, the film conveys the atmosphere and nuance that “Grandpa is likely to pass away soon” by, for example, showing Grandma looking at Gong-soon, who is left alone while Grandpa coughs in the background, before cutting to a shot of the eaves in the rain; or by showing Grandpa’s deteriorating condition, then cutting to a white bird playing by the stream before flying off into the distance. In this way, the director skillfully conveys nonverbal messages using the backgrounds where the grandfather and grandmother are situated, naturally drawing the audience into the story.
Water
Since ancient times, water has been an archetypal symbol of birth and death. Water is the life force that sustains and nurtures all things, yet the phrase “crossing the river” signifies death in many cultures and religions. In the film, water represents both life and death. The stream in front of the elderly couple’s house and the bridge spanning it appear repeatedly throughout the film. A bridge crossed countless times over countless days, whether going to the market or to the mountains. How many memories must the couple have accumulated there over 76 years? But just as flowing water never returns, a breath that has ceased will never return. Now, the river that the husband has crossed alone—and from which he can never return. The title “My Love, Don’t Cross That River,” which incorporates the symbol of water as both life and death, runs through the entire film.
Opening and Ending
The film opens with a black-and-white scene showing a snow-covered grave and the back of a sobbing grandmother. Initially, the entire scene is in black and white, but it gradually becomes colored, with the grandmother and the grave slowly coming into focus. When I first saw this scene, I simply recognized it as the grandmother standing before the grave, but when the exact same scene appeared at the end of the film, I felt an emotion that was far more intense. At the beginning of the film, I simply accepted it as “it’s snowing and there’s an old woman in front of a grave,” but after glimpsing the couple’s love and life, the old woman’s sobs resonated deeply within me, and I realized that the world itself was grieving, draped entirely in silver mourning attire.
