The Remarkable Life Of Ibelin

Norwegian teenager Mats Steen died in November 2014 at the age of 25. Born with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, he spent much of his life isolated from peers and in a wheelchair as his body gradually degenerated. After Mats’ death, his parents were riven by grief for the loss of their son, for the friends he’d never make, the adventures he’d never have. But, after posting of his death on Mats’ blog, they found themselves inundated with messages from people saying how much Mats had meant to them. People he had never met but who would gradually open his parents’ eyes to a parallel, online life they’d known nothing about.

Documentarian Benjamin Ree (The Painter And The Thief) tells Mats’ story in two distinct parts. The first is a poignant and deeply sad chronology of Mats’ corporeal life, lovingly chronicled by his parents and replayed through the fuzzy scan-lines of home-video tapes as we witness everything from his first steps to his final days. It’s not until his parents stumble across his second, online life that the film rewinds, beginning once again — only this time showing not Mats Steen the teenager, but Ibelin Redmoore the strapping, moustachioed detective who was Mats’ alter-ego in behemoth online multiplayer game World Of Warcraft. From this point on, we are sucked directly into the game, experiencing his life in the same manner he did. Ree combines narration lifted from Mats’ blog with actor-voiced dialogue taken from his actual in-game conversations to recreate integral parts of his online life — all beautifully animated and re-enacted using characters from the game.

A joyful celebration of a short life seen through pixellated eyes.

It’s a startlingly effective and surprisingly cinematic device that serves to perfectly capture the world as Mats saw it: the realm of Azeroth, which, to him, gradually became more real than the Norwegian town in which he physically resided. We see him run through fields in a manner long denied him, slay dragons, forge connections, make friends, and even experience his first kiss — all during thousands of hours spent online. Faithfully scripted from reams of digital text logs collated by his in-game guild, Starlight, the exchanges and interactions feel deeply personal and occasionally voyeuristic as Mats falls in love with a rogue named Rumour (in reality, Dutch gamer Lisette Roovers), before having his heart broken and, later, breaking one in turn. He helps Reike (Danish mother Xenia-Anni Nielsen) connect with her autistic son by bringing him into the game, and soon becomes the linchpin of his online community — all while steadfastly hiding his disability and refusing any suggestion of a video chat or in-person meet-up.

Rees intercuts this in-game storytelling with real-world interviews, giving voice to the people behind the characters Mats interacts with and filling in more of the emotional context behind his relationships — which grow increasingly fraught as his condition worsens and frustration drives him to lash out at those around him. But the most affecting scenes most often revolve around his parents, Trude and Robert, whose guilt and candour cut to the bone, but who find solace in the revelation of his in-game exploits and, we feel, truly come to know their son in the months after his death.

The film takes pains to depict an artificial world that, for Mats Steen, offered everything the real one did not, making the point that a life online can be as rich and emotionally valid as one of flesh and blood. And if points about the generational attitude to screen time and the validity of digital connections sometimes feel blunt, such qualms are offset by the honest depiction of a young man given the chance to reach out emotionally when left unable to do so physically.

Questions of digital legacy and the nature of living aside, this is a delicately drawn account of two parents mourning for and connecting with their late son, and a joyful celebration of a short life seen through pixellated eyes.