Seemingly unassuming as it starts, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin gently kicks into gear with the documentary tale of a Norwegian sufferer of a muscular degenerative disease, Mats, and his death at age 25. Then the bombshell: his parents discover hidden on his computer (we’ve already seen significant footage of him curled up in a wheelchair, playing video games using special gear allowing him to work the games with just a finger or two, we’ve heard his parents bemoan his wasted time gaming) a community of gamers who swirled around him in a second life on World of Warcraft (I have a friend who spent years on this multiplayer online game, so I know how addictive/rewarding it is). From there writer/director Benjamin Ree plots out a fresh biography (using animated resconstructions of game action plus actual text conversation discovered in Mats’s gaming archives) of Ibelin (Mats’s game name), full of intrigue and emotion and even love. We see some of Ibelin’s closest online friends, face to face in interview, and we begin to marvel at the courage and humanity of Mats/Ibelin. The Remarkable Life of Ibelin is a touching, unsentimental story of the powers of friendship and love in the most difficult of physical circumstances, and the last quarter is truly moving.
Book, movie/show, and album reviews
