The husband's death is certainly uncanny: what was a person thinking when he chose to walk on the railway tracks, and (purposedly) allow himself to be run over by a slow-moving train?
The rest of the film doesn't explain in full, but we are allowed to develop our own answers, with the materials provided. In this sense it is a very open film, and paradoxically suspends itself from our belief---or disbelief. For instance, I'll share with you my take on why. Despair is not really so outlandish; it is an impulse that many of us share when, with age and experience, the deep injustice and pains of life have at some point hit us in the face with full force, and our heart gest pickled in a mixture of discontent and yearning. So, from time to time, when we reach a point of crisis, or merely of accumulated stress and fatigue, a "why-not" question pops up in our head. The "why-not" recognition comes as an anti-dote, an enlightenment, a moment of zen, that may result in all kinds of actions.Some quit their well-paid IT job and go to Tibet; some move to remote villages to devote themselves to Project Hope; some become missionaries; and some, well, take their own lives. Like the mass suicides of girls in Canton Province a year ago.
That's just my own personal take. Yours is up to you.
The only fault I could find with the film is the very long closing scene: it doesn't take 10 minutes for us to get the idea behind the old man/ the widow/ the boy walking silently in the sunset. Overindulgence has a way of turning into cliches.
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