A work of heartbreaking emotion, honest inspiration, and unparalleled documentary filmmaking, director Benjamin Ree’s The Remarkable Life of Ibelin taps into an unlikely source of visual and human inspiration that will delight and move all who view it. The story of an exceptional person who made everyone within their (virtual) orbit feel valued and lighter by their presence, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin looks at the more positive aspects of living a chronically online life, but does so with a great deal of purpose, nuance, and perspective. Ree (The Painter and the Thief) has made a powerful testament to the impact one can have by simply being a good listener and making an effort to make others feel seen and understood; even when the listener’s own life is dominated by pain and hardship.
It spoils nothing to give away the ending of The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, since Ree makes the bittersweetness of his film noticeable from the top. 25 year old Norwegian gamer Mats Steen passed away in 2014 following a nearly life long battle with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, an aggressive form of the disease that relegated him to a wheelchair and largely to home care. Mats’ father and mother, Robert and Trude, allowed him to play video games a lot more than other parents might because there was so much else that their son was missing out on in life. Mats’ primary game of choice was World of Warcraft, in which his avatar was the kind, but physically capable Ibelin Redmoore, a travelling detective. Before his passing, Mats left the password to his blog in his parents’ care, and they posted about their son’s passing. Almost immediately the Steens were inundated with emails and instant messages from gamers around the world who wanted to share the various ways that this person they never met touched their lives.
While Ree conducts sit down interviews with Steen’s family and those willing to share stories of their interactions with Mats, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin is anything but a standard talking heads documentary. With the help of a massive archive of Ibelin’s exploits, conversations, and adventures in the fantastical land of Azeroth, Ree is able to animate Mats’ online life as it would’ve appeared in World or Warcraft. A picture is painted as to how Mats was able to connect to a larger world and how this young man fashioned an idealized version of himself. While Mats’ condition made him a less than ideal battle partner in a frantic online combat situation where seconds counted, Steen became an unlikely sort of in-game therapist for a lot of people, and a beacon of warmth and light. He helped many gamers get through tough times – even unknowingly assisting a mother in who had been trying to connect to her autistic son – and as such, Mats was never excluded from group gatherings, even if he couldn’t physically attend. Ree’s decision to capture Mats’ life and online relationships in such a computer generated fashion stays true to the young man’s experiences and how others perceived him within the game.
It might be a fantasy world that helped give Mats Steen a lot of his life experience, but for him, a lot of the seemingly mundane day-to-day tasks carried out by able bodied people were also a fantasy. For many people, staying online all day would be unhealthy, but The Remarkable Life of Ibelin offers a rare example to the contrary. Mats couldn’t work or interact much in reality, so video games with sprawling online communities gave him an outlet to feel useful. For Mats, Ibelin was a creative and emotional lifeline – a for him to speak freely about things to genuine friends – and his personality was strong enough to rise above the sort of negativity often associated with online gaming. But while a lot of Ree’s film is about the positivity Steen was able to inspire, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin is also unafraid of looking into the darker corners of Mats’ life, most notably his struggles with depression and the progression of his degenerative disorder. In fact, the darker Ree gets, the more remarkable and inspirational Mats’ story becomes to the viewer.
The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, which picked up an award for direction and the audience award for documentary at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, keeps finding new layers to explore with regards to Steen’s in-game exploits; little ripples of kindness and understanding that created big waves for some people. Ree has crafted a work of charming visuals with enough emotional and narrative substance to befit the online sandbox Mats’ spent most of his days playing in. The overall impact of Ree’s film is emotionally devastating in the best possible way, not because of how Mats’ life ended too soon, but because there are so few people like him out there in the online ether. Ree handles Mats’ story with a great deal of respect and equity, coming about all of the film’s deep emotional swells in a natural and unforced manner. It’s a documentary unlike any other that shares the story of someone who was wholly one-of-a-kind.
The Remarkable Life of Ibelin opens at TIFF Lightbox in Toronto, VIFF Centre in Vancouver, and Cinéma Guzzo Méga-Plex Sphèretech 14 in Montreal on Friday, October 18, 2024. It will be available to stream on Netflix starting Friday, October 25. It was originally screened as part of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
