The Sundance Film Festival is a place where some early awards contenders and or some surprises can come. More often than not they come in the form of great documentaries. That’s the case with The latest documentary I want to review called The Remarkable Life of Ibelin. It’s not your average everyday normal documentary film though. It’s a mixture of different styles and has one of the most emotional and touching stories you’ll see all year.

Mats Stern is a young man in Norway who contracts a disease called Dechennes, a muscular dystrophy disease. This disease affects one’s ability to move, walk, talk, and every other thing we as humans take for granted in our lives. As he gets sicker and sicker though he reverts into a special place in his computer in an RPG called The World of Warcraft. His character’s name is Ibelin Redmore. His family didn’t know anything about this until after he passed away when they found his password to his blog and sent a message telling all his online friends that he had passed away. What they received in return was beyond belief.

The filmmaker Benjamin Ree used several different styles to tell this “remarkable” story. First and foremost is The World of Warcraft itself. Using some of the narrative from the game he was able to help tell this man’s story. The game has a way of telling stories that can be a little wooden or stiff, but mixed with a narrator and the backdrop of what this young man is going through it creates a whole new perspective.  I genuinely got emotional in a few scenes that took place in the gameplay mode.

The second style the film uses is the tried and true element of archival footage and family home videos. Using all the home videos and archival footage the viewers get to learn about this man and his family. Robert. Trude, and Mia Steen. They tell stories about their son/ brother that are difficult to listen to because of his condition. He was a bright young boy before he contracted the disease that would change his life. He had such an upside in his future. It’s sad to see what happened to him.

The third aspect of this story is the typical talking heads that give the audience information and perspective they wouldn’t otherwise get. The talking heads are mixed between the family members aforementioned and various men and women who he helped or inspired within the concept of the gameplay mode. These were the most surprising talking heads because they shed a lot of light on who Mats truly was. He was able to be somebody different in the game. Whether that was a good or bad thing is still to be determined. 

As someone who has lived a specific non-inspiring kind of life most of it I was thrown back by this man’s story. He hid his true nature from everybody he was in contact with. His family didn’t know the World he created for himself in the context of the game and all the people he was friends with in the gameplay mode. These two lives never crossed until he passed away and that changed everything for everyone involved in his life. That was the real story of this man’s life.

Life brings a lot of ups and downs and in a world full of uncertainty The Remarkable Life of Ibelin showed there are two sides to every story. The one most people see on the outside isn’t exactly the life we truly want to live or are living. I can relate to that myself. The three-sided storytelling using the game mode, archival footage, family home videos, and talking heads was ingenious by the director Benjamin Ree. He was able to bring out the emotions in me. It just shows we aren’t who people think we are or who we perceive ourselves as. Most of us want to live a different life than we live. Rarely do we get a chance to do so in the fashion we would truly want. This film shows that in a great way and the process gives this man something he could be proud of.

4 1/2 stars

Dan Skip Allen