Mo-Young Jin: My Love, Don’t Cross that River
In thematic terms a follow-up on the Armenian ”One, Two, Three”, this Korean documentary, shot over a period of 15 months, documents what the Armenian old people are missing and looking for: Love.
This is what the couple in the beautifully shot documentary has, Love, in its purest form, still alive after 76 years of marriage, yes seventy-six years of marriage! They live in the countryside in pretty landscape surroundings, they survive harsh winters, they take time to do snow ball throwing, they walk to the market in the village, always dressed up in traditional clothes that are as colourful as their children’s clothes are grey and boring and ”civilised” – suits etc. They eat together, she nurses him all the way through when he gets weaker. Yes, the time for them to leave this world is getting closer.
He is in his late 90’es, she is around 10 years younger, and she is the one doing the talking with his hearing slowly disappearing. It is amazing how close the director has been able to come to his protagonists. I thought first that he was a relative – an outsider can not get that close, I thought – but in an interview with the director in connection with the Canadian Hot Docs festival, he told how and why he decided to do it all by himself and that he looked upon the film as a message to all of us, ”be kind to each other”. He did so with respect for the old couple and an eye for beauty.
The film, that got the Audience Award at the recent Moscow International Film Festival, sold more than 4 million tickets in cinemas in its home country!
Korea, 2014, 86 mins.
