TRAIFF 2023: Relics of Love and War Review

This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.

The best stories are often the most personal and that could be felt through every frame of Relics of Love and War. This 45-minute documentary short offers a snapshot of an important time in Chinese-Canadian history told through the story of how director Keith Lock’s parents met and fell in love in the midst of WWII. That being said, it wouldn’t be much of a story without some adversity before eventual triumph but their journey involves a history that not many audiences may be aware of involving the alarming treatment of Chinese-Canadians. Up to the end of WWII, the Chinese were considered as less than and lacked many of the basic rights of other Canadians had at the time, assuming they were allowed to enter the country as a strict long-standing exclusionary policy severely limited the Chinese-Canadian population. While an important story to tell, it is certainly one that deserves more than the film’s short running time therefore in trying to do too much, it fails to work as a whole. The story of Lock’s parents is more than enough in this context.

Putting the love and the war parts together, Lock’s father was one of many Chinese-Canadian volunteers who enlisted in a top-secret suicide mission called Operation Oblivion (they were not allowed to enlist in the army). Trained like specialized soldiers working behind enemy lines, little did they know where their special set of skills would take them. In the form of a video essay, Lock used archive footage, including some unseen, as he narrated a story that only he could tell that honors not only his parents but also the unit of men, who laid their necks out for a country that didn’t exactly value them, and their impact on the war and the future generations of Chinese-Canadians. Though a compelling story in its own right, trying to do justice for everyone and everything, it perhaps somewhat falters as it takes on a little too much as it steps back and looks at its subject matter on a more macro level. A byproduct of its structure, it needed more to make its sweeping conclusion more satisfying.      

At the end of the day, Relics of Love and War is a powerful documentary short that delivers a snapshot of an epic story deserving of more time.

*still courtesy of Wondrous Light Inc.*

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Keith Noakes

The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.