You never directly hear Mats Steens in The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, as he unfortunately passed away back in 2014 at the age of 25 of Muscular Dystrophy, but you still hear him and his thoughts throughout the entirety of the film. Mats, or Ibelin as he was known in the online game World of Warcraft, also commonly known as WoW, was originally thought, by his family, to have lived a lonely life, isolated due to his condition. However, after they post about his death on his blog, they start receiving dozens and dozens of condolences from people they had no idea he knew. This unravelled a whole story of the realization that he wasn’t lonely and that he did have a community that loved him. Through thousands and thousands of chat logs and blog entries, you see the life that Ibelin lived, the life-long friends that he made and the impact that he had on them. For anyone who’s turned to a specific hobby or community and made long-term friends there, this documentary will surely hit home as to how vital those communities are for some people.

The documentary briefly goes over Ibelin’s life as it was known to his parents, he started out as a normal, healthy child, but once he was diagnosed with Muscular Dystrophy the progression of the disease isolated him, causing him to further retreat into video games, a hobby he had loved his entire life. You see the small apartment he had in the basement of his parents place to give him independence as an adult, the accessibility changes he had to make in order to allow him to continue to have access to his computer and the people he loved in WoW. Outside of his family, the director talks with a couple of the people from his WoW group whom he impacted, a woman named Rumours, who Ibelin’s character has an in-game (and sort-of out of game) kind of relationship with, and a mother who was struggling to connect with her autistic son and then begins bonding with him once they start playing together. It’s made clear through the stories they tell him that Ibelin was the person everyone thought they could lean on, and was always there to give people advice.

Much of the documentary is told through World of Warcraft animations, told through chat logs of not only what was said, but what was done and what was felt, allowing for the audience to see these situations described by his friends unfold and immerse them into the story and the game. The documentary does fail to describe WoW as a game in any way, which could alienate some viewers who might be completely unfamiliar with the game, so a short summary of it could have been useful to allow them to understand the basics. The animations don’t always work for me, but for the most part, they are a very unique way of telling a story without the main character alive anymore to tell it themselves.

Aside from sharing the positive way in which Ibelin impacted people, the documentary is not afraid to showcase the less positive side, showcasing Ibelin as a human being with real feelings. The argument amongst the larger group boiled down to Ibelin’s secrecy, agitated from his declining health, he lashes out as the whole group before suffering a major health crisis and finally reveals to the group the truth about his Muscular Dystrophy. Although their friendships are all online, and none of them ever met or even spoke through voice chat with Ibelin, that never changed the connection they had with him. It showcases that, just like with IRL friend groups, they fought and bickered and argued, but at the end of the day, they still loved one another.

This documentary is going to hit home for anyone who’s ever formed a relationship with a group of people online over a shared interest. As someone who’s done that several times, going as far as meeting up with them and spending extended periods of time going to concerts with them, knowing some of them for over 10-years now, seeing the way that online friendships truly do change lives and impact people in real and significant ways made me emotional. This documentary surely isn’t perfect and perhaps it drags a little in the middle, but the emotional weight of the story, discussing the way online friendships can change lives, is something truly incredible. Even if your community isn’t gaming, anything from TV shows to movies to other hobbies like Awards Predicting, the way people find solace in communities when they don’t have anywhere else to go allows them to form connections that never would’ve occurred otherwise. Ibelin didn’t live a lonely life as was first though, rather he was surrounded by a friend group who clearly loved and cherished him, and will continue to carry his memory with them.

SCORE: 8/10

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Information

Director: Benjamin Ree
DP: Rasmus Tukia, Tore Vollan
Composer: Uno Helmersson
Length: 104 minutes
Distributor: Netflix