After wheelchair-bound Mats passes away from an incurable muscular disease, time suddenly stands still for the stricken Steen family. For the Steen clan, the passing was particularly painful because they didn't believe Mats had managed to live a full life in his short years. How can you, if you're just glued to World of Warcraft all day? All his parents could see was a broken boy who could no longer enjoy his mum's Christmas dinner, who couldn't date girls, who couldn't party with friends, who couldn't live a 'normal' life. What his parents would come to realise was that Mats was actually living his best possible life as 'Ibelin' - an avatar in Blizzard's online game that would go on to influence the lives of many people around the world.
This is the premise of The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, a documentary film that has used 42,000 pages of logs, blog posts and a bunch of talented animators to tell the story of a gamer's secret life and also the lives he managed to touch online. It should be said right away that it's hard not to be moved by this story, whether you're interested in computer games or not. I wasn't entirely sure about the narrative format at first, with the mix of intimate home videos and animated WoW sequences sounding wrong, but I'd be lying if I said this wasn't an effective way of portraying Mats' World of Warcraft persona. Mats here plays a sort of master detective who tries to meet as many people as possible online, and his wisdom quickly spreads across Azeroth, where we get to meet a number of real-life people who tell us about the impression Mats left behind. It's an incredibly creative approach that gives the title character plenty of humanity behind the beefy avatar, without embellishing the frustrating truth behind the computer screen.
Sometimes the documentary can fall a little towards the overly sentimental and I often find the music a little overblown and out of place, but there is still an authenticity behind Ibelin that is palpable, there is a beating emotional heart behind the reconstruction that pumps warmly and kindly from beginning to end. Although Mats is played by a voice actor, you can still feel Mats' pain and taste for the life he never had behind those digital eyes, where he manages to experience everything from crushes to reconciliations through his newfound friends. The archive footage is given new life here, carefully navigating its way through Ibelin's legend until the very last frame, where it becomes particularly difficult to hold back the tears. As a viewer, you don't want the journey to end, but we know from the start where it's all going.
While The Remarkable Life of Ibelin is a consistently beautiful tribute to Mats Steen's digital legacy, the documentary is also a beautiful reminder of video games' ability to act as more than just an escape from the cold realities of life - the connection and love that can be expressed through the medium of games and its wonderful communities is actually hard to refute here. If anything, this documentary is about the impenetrable power of love, the healing power of role-playing games, and how the computer screen doesn't just have to be a distraction from the outside world - it can also be a warming window for those who crave life the most.