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In the documentary My Love, Don't Cross That River by Jin Mo-Young, the director successfully uses pathos appeals and symbolism to capture the impact that the death of Jo Byeong-Man has on his wife and family. However, the audience is left to question how genuine the elderly couple's relationship really was with both each other and their family as most of the scenes in the documentary appear fabricated and exaggerated for the camera.

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The purpose of the documentary is to provide insight on how aging has an impact on both the people who are aging, and those who are part of their lives. The director set out to shoot a beautiful, yet tragic, film that would cause the audience to realize the effects that life and death has on both individuals and families. He achieved this through documenting the relationship between the old couple through their daily lives, even including mundane activities such as going to bed, eating, or taking a walk, and showing how it abruptly changes with the onslaught of death.

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My Love, Don't Cross That River Analysis

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My Love, Don't Cross That River Analysis

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By: Jack Pierson, Kalvin Fellows

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Many view the documentary My Love, Don't Cross That River as a heartfelt, sad yet beautiful motion picture. However, others question the validity and authenticity of many scenes and main ideas in the film.

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When it comes to tearjerkers, Koreans don't mess around. They are not satisfied with a movie or TV drama that makes you sniffle a bit. They demand full-on bawling. Maybe this is because Koreans have a long history of being occupied, colonized, and brutalized by foreign invaders. (Not to mention that they have been in a state of war with each other for the last 63 years.) Or maybe it's something in our DNA. Whatever it is, tragedy seems to be as much a part of the Korean psyche as freedom is to 'Merica's.

So I was not surprised that My Love, Don't Cross That River -an immensely popular 2014 South Korean documentary about a sweet elderly couple facing their imminent demise-was going to require tissues, and lots of them. But the movie is such a blatant, manipulative attempt at generating maximum tears that at the end of the movie-the climax of human suffering-I burst out laughing instead. (Although I was also sort of crying, because I am not a heartless robot.)

From the beginning, filmmaker Jin Mo-young makes it clear that this will be a Painful Yet Beautiful Movie. He begins with a wide shot of-spoiler alert!-the wife, 89-year-old Kang Gye-yeol, softly wailing in front of the grave of her husband, 98-year-old Jo Byeong-man, in the dead of winter, set to very sad piano music. The rest of the movie is a flashback, so we get to see moments of their blissful happiness while knowing that the dark cloud of death is looming just 90 minutes away. The couple spends their days cooking rice, gathering firewood, picking flowers, and feeding their dogs. They use the bathroom. They bathe. They take afternoon naps. They hold hands, dance, sing, and tease each other. They are reduced to caricatures of cute old people.

We don't get a whole lot more than that. Jin doesn't seem interested in getting a complex, nuanced view of these individuals. We learn only a minimal amount about their backgrounds: They got married when she was 14. He worked for her family. They had 12 children, but only six lived into adulthood.

And then the dread starts creeping in. As the husband's health declines, his dignity gets stripped in the process. We see him urinating into a chamber pot at night, getting his butt washed by his wife, and struggling to hang a mirror on the wall. At the wife's birthday party, their eldest daughter yells at their eldest son-scandalous, in Korean patriarchal hierarchy-for failing to take care of them. When the siblings resort to hitting each other, the parents break down and cry.

This doesn't feel like intimacy but invasion. And the sole purpose seems to be to wring out every last drop of their suffering. "Time passes. People get old. There's nothing you can do about it," the husband says while he is still upright.

In case you didn't get the idea that this movie is about life and death, the filmmaker has helpfully incorporated the seasons as symbolism. So they happily pick flowers in the spring and then lie sick in bed when it's raining. The river that runs past their house swells and subsides throughout the year. After a shot of them strolling through a field, we see two frogs chase each other in the water. (There is no subtlety in this movie.)

Speaking of lack of subtlety, there is something very artificial about this "documentary." While the couple is obviously real, and their affection genuine, there are elements that are highly suspect. For starters, they wear brand-new, shiny matching "traditional" clothes-the kind that most people reserve for special occasions. The fact that they wear such fancy outfits while doing mundane tasks like shoveling snow makes it all the more ludicrous. They also have big sparkly jewels on their fingers but live in a countryside shack where they have to forage for firewood.

Additionally, several shots seem too well framed to be spontaneous, and there's at least one instance in which the camera seems to know exactly where to go to capture the best shot of the action before the action happens. All the scenes of them throwing leaves/snow/water at each other feel, if not staged, then at least played up for the camera.

This manipulation cheapens their lives. It also shortchanges the audience. The saddest part is not when the movie comes full circle and we watch the poor widow wailing in the snow for her beloved husband for a ridiculous amount of time, but when you realize that the filmmaker believes that bludgeoning the audience to death with sorrow makes for a great film.

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My Love, Don't Cross That River Exploits an Elderly Couple for Maximum Tear Generation

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When it comes to tearjerkers, Koreans don't mess around. They are not satisfied with a movie or TV drama that makes you sniffle a bit. They demand full-on bawling. Maybe this is because Koreans have a long history of being occupied, colonized, and brutalized by foreign invaders.

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This movie was likely so popular in Korea because it depicts the importance of family as well as the hardship the loss of a loved one leads to. This causes the audience to think about their own relationships that they have with friends and family and encourages these relationships to always be cherished, as they could abruptly end at any time. This idea was furthered by the fact that the relationship between the married couple was likely altered by the director to make it appear perfect, making the audience realize how important close relationships are.

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The purpose of the documentary was achieved through the use of symbolism and pathos appeals. First, Jin Mo-Young uses the changing of seasons to symbolize the changing relationship between the elderly couple. In the spring, the two pick flowers with each other and enjoy the beauty of nature, while in the winter, the wife weeps in the woods over her husband's death. The director even includes a quote from a Korean priest, who says people are like leaves, as in the spring and summer they live and prosper, but in the winter they fall from the trees and die. In addition, the director including scenes of the wife as well as her children crying over the declining health and death of the husband serves as an emotional appeal, as the audience feels sympathetic for the family.