Director Lee Myung-se, long known as a visual stylist whose images often outshine story, has turned to documentary filmmaking.
Billed as a “cinematic documentary,” ‘Ran 12.3’ is a tightly assembled visual record of the night of Dec. 3, 2024 — and a large-scale collage shaped by Lee’s editing and staging choices.
Lee avoids the usual documentary tools of narration and interview clips. Instead, he builds a 96-minute work from music, archival footage and a small amount of newly staged material, structured like an orchestral piece.
The approach is unusual for the genre, and the “cinematic” label becomes clear early. The film opens by showing the screen of a single-screen theater in Gwangju that can seat more than 800, pulling it open twice as if to declare this is documentary and cinema at once — a film about watching a film.
“Cinematic,” here, does not mean fiction. The film’s aim is to make audiences collectively relive that night.
After more than a year of coverage and online content — across broadcasts, newspapers, YouTube and social media — many viewers already know the broad outline of the unprecedented martial-law crisis. The question is what it means, now, to face that night again.
Lee does not hold back. He pushes a wide range of emotions tied to the martial-law moment — blunt mockery, wit that refuses to be crushed by grim reality, tightly packed record-keeping, and an almost reverent awe toward what the film frames as revolutionary light.
In the opening, a familiar live broadcast of the martial-law declaration is reframed: the on-screen label “President of the Republic of Korea” slips into view, and the camera lingers in close-up on the odd expression of an aide walking behind the president, signaling the film’s direction.
What begins with ridicule quickly shifts. Over a solemn orchestral bed, the soundtrack adds piercing effects. A black screen, reminiscent of silent film, follows with subtitled dialogue attributed to forces that supported the martial-law move.
Then come fragments from that night: a live feed from the opposition party leader; a YouTuber’s shocked real-time reaction; citizens shouting as they converge on the National Assembly; the coordinated response of aides and staff who held the building; and tense, unfiltered exchanges and reactions from the Assembly speaker and lawmakers gathered in the main chamber.
Material many viewers believe they already know is reassembled through Lee’s selections and music by Cho Sung-woo into an intentionally heightened cinematic language, forming what the film presents as a massive collage within documentary form.
At 96 minutes, ‘Ran 12.3’ can feel like a sensory pop-art piece. At times it goes further, edging into the painterly — particularly in sequences that depict citizens heading to Yeouido in a style likened to American comic books known for superhero imagery.
Audiences will come with different motives. But viewers looking for a calm, straightforward record that neatly organizes the events of the night of Dec. 3, 2024, through Dec. 4 may find this the wrong choice. Those seeking something closer to a spy story, thriller, black comedy or chaotic farce may find it a better fit — and the film delivers that genre-driven momentum.
In the end, ‘Ran 12.3’ stands out more for form than for content. Even for a director celebrated as a stylist, any expectation that his documentary would not differ much from existing works is undercut by how unfamiliar this one feels — a new kind of documentary from a filmmaker nearing 70.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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