Repetition of Snow and the Colour White

I noticed that in some scenes where people are dead or are in the process of dying, there is snow covering the surrounding landscape. The corpse of Aoi was frozen and around the ice were lots of snow. When it appears to be Doctor Kim Dong-won who senselessly killed a person in the woods, he was doing the hideous act at a time when snow could still be seen on the grounds. I wasn't back in Montreal last week, so I ended up watching the film on my own time. Several hours before I watched the film, there was an article I came across (thanks to the History Students' Association of McGill) which was about the corpses of WWI soldiers who were killed by the fierce winter when they were on a third front that cut across the Italian Alps during the first great war. Gradually the Alps' glaciers got larger and trapped their bodies for almost a century, of which the end result was that due to global warming, the glaciers melted to produce their perfectly mummified bodies. By this historical example, I am saying that snow can be more closely associated with death than beauty and winter fun. To illustrate, in the vignette where the doctor couple (Doctors Kim Dong-won and Kim In-young) were enjoying themselves with the snow-filled glass ball in a tatami room, the wife was clearly entertaining herself with the artificial snow in the ball but then the mood quickly changed to unease and fear when the husband realized she was not really alive. See how even whatever little happiness is present changes to notions of depression and death in Epitaph.

White is the most prominent colour I noticed in this film. Not only the snow, but the medical attire, the tiled floors, and the clothing of the young Asako and her mother are all white. Traditionally white symbolizes innocence. We can take into account then that the doctors and nurses have generally good intentions at work. We see this especially when a doctor dressed in white attempted to revive Asako even after she breathed her last, and the look on his face was of dismay when he realized a little late that reviving her was impossible. Just before Asako left the earth, she was reunited with her mother in a vision. At that particular moment, they were lying on snow and wore white dresses albeit blood-stained dresses. I think a purpose this scene served was to show that the ghost of Asako’s mother was not actually an evil spirit but a lonely one which could not rest in peace without the company of her daughter, who probably would not have been too happy had she stayed on earth. So the solution was that both of them were to be together eternally in another world. I guess you could say it was a win-win situation.

If you'd like to check out the article which inspired me to write about the snow motif, here's the link:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-one/10562017/Melting-glaciers-in-northern-Italy-reveal-corpses-of-WW1-soldiers.html