Norwegian-born documentary, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin sheds light on Mats Steen, a 25 year old who died in 2014 due to the complications of DMD which is a severe type of muscular dystrophy. While the Steen family thought he had holed up in the basement, unable to leave the house due to his condition, little did they know that during that very time Mats was leading an entire different life, socializing with his friends he had met online while playing World of Warcraft. Mats has a World of Warcraft character named Ibelin, who is a rich landowner that takes leisurely travel excursions, pursues a career in private investigation, and is a womanizer.
First named Ibelin until the time of renaming after Netflix acquired it, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin was featured for the first time at the Sundance Film Festival on January 19, 2024. The film is a World Documentary Competition entry. Later it was awarded the Audience Award: World Cinema Documentary and The Directing Award: World Cinema Documentary. This achievement is easy to understand as well because The Remarkable Life of Ibelin is about friendships, self-discovery as well as how a video game is able to bond people together, which is also visually aided by the awesome graphics that depict the charm of the World of Warcraft video games.
The Remarkable Life of Ibelin has a relational quandary at its core. The film not only intends to visualize the narrative of Mat’s two identities, that of the real person and the World of Warcraft character ‘Ibelin’, but the directors also choose to accompany the film with two styles. There is a classical documentary style that includes talking heads, family snaps which introduce the film as the story based on Mats’ parents’ side Robert and Trude who feature to be the main characters. After that, watching emails sent by Mats’ World of Warcraft community to his parents, the audience sees a storyline from the viewpoint of Mats.
The directors created a 3D model of Mats’ World of Warcraft character Ibelin, an American pianist and author seeking to master the MMO, based on a massive 42,000 game logs Mats had. This way, the film strays away from the singular conventional style of a typical documentary film which is its aesthetic strength as well as bringing out Mats’ perspective more. Although, like all other parts of the film, these segments are animated, created under the metrics of World of Warcraft graphics prohibition, such stylized presentations are integrated into live action. This is Mats’ story so it has to be in that universe which he admired the most and where he felt surely to be the real Mats.
Another voice actor who pleaded Mats’s voice read from Mats’s blog ‘Musings of Life,’ giving details of his life. Commenting on the way Mats felt about things shown to him through the eyes of his parents in prior, provides rich detail not to be forgotten. With the help of the blog and gaming logs, there are no doubts Mats is the leading figure in his film, speaking even though he has passed.
Ibelin was a person who the viewers could relate to, be it when he assisted in resolving a player’s inter-game conflict or helped a child and his mother connect through video games. The way in which all the characters come together at the end for Ibelin’s funeral is also powerful and emotional in its own manner.
The animated segments are brilliantly created as they creatively use the mundane movements of World of Warcraft graphics. If World of Warcraft is a game that you have never played, it would not come as a shock that you know how the game looks, thus many audiences will be thrilled with the segments revolving around Ibelin’s character. The film has pacing that gives the World of Warcraft characters plenty of experience and makes one invested in the characters’ stories.
Since video games have begun to have a wider appeal in the film industry, it is quite refreshing to see that The Remarkable Life of Ibelin aims to depict the artistry of the game. In fact, the movie does much better in terms of capturing the spirit, visuals and tone of Alberta’s World of Warcraft than the 2016 Warcraft film ever did.
As Ibelin, he is ideologically- within the context of the narrative and visually able to oscillate and von Ibelin. The film states that whenever he went online to the WOW, his friends would spot Ibelin dashing, something Mats himself was helpless to perform. For Mats, playing ‘Ibelin’ was a chance to enjoy a life for which his body had always imprisoned him. However, for Mats, Ibelin was not just a Warcraft character in the first place — Mats saw Ibelin as himself, the image he dreamed of showing to the world.
There’s a common thought that the friends made on the internet does not count as real, and the only way to be friends is if one interacts in person. However, in a post-COVID-19 society, where millions of individuals were stuck in isolation for indefinite periods, games such as World of Warcraft helped to bring a feeling of togetherness. Of course when one sits in front of the computer and looks at various fandom spaces, it is hard to think of anything else but loads of drama and hatred. At the same time, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin serves as an effective reminder of the no-sci-fi zone at the global level – the usefulness of the internet. So much has been said about how more contemporary societies which are more accessible are at the same time more fragmented.
The film shines through its universality in the sense that it evokes a very human need we all have, which is the need to be loved, the need to know that we matter. Chances are that at least once, everyone has wondered the same thing: what kind of mark will life have left upon them, and who will be in the audience to send them off. What words will people use when we’re gone? Will anyone even care that we aren’t here anymore? The title should be ‘The Life Ibelin Deserves’, however this book tells the story of one singularly ordinary man who somehow managed to defy expectations and touched the lives of countless others in remarkable ways. We should all aim for such greatness, and to be fair, we probably are at least one person whom many other people will love deeply.
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