The Remarkable Life of Ibelin (2024)

Here is the thing. This is a movie about a young man who was born with an illness that would inevitably lead to an early death after a long period of decline. So this is a tough story, and it stirkes close to home for me. My youngest son had a brain tumor when he was five years old and had surgery, radiation, and 18 months of chemotherapy, so I know what it is like to fear for your child's life, to mourn the things that they will miss, and to grapple with the reality that death might come too soon for them. Some people might run to the hills rather than watch this, but I lean into it. Ironically, it is my childhood cancer survivor, now an adult himself, who wanted to watch this. Mats Steen was born in 1989, and before he was even a few years old, his parents knew something was wrong with his development. He was diagnosed with a truly cruel disease called Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, which weakened his physical state with each passing year, leading to his death at the age of 25. The opening half-hour details his existence through interviews with his emotionally vulnerable parents & sister, alongside home videos that make his fading physical condition palpable. After he died, his parents discovered that Mats had spent possibly as much as 20,000 hours in a game called “World of Warcraft,” where he created an avatar named Ibelin. To say he had a rich online life would be an understatement, and it is presented in his own words, through the game, as well as with interviews of players who he had relationships with in the game. It really allows for an understanding of not only why this experience mattered to him, but how much Mats shaped the lives of others through his encounters. He made friends, had his first crush, encouraged growth in others, and found his best self. A lot of modern culture derides screen time as a fruitless pursuit, but this illustrate its potential connective value, how it can bring people together in ways that forever change them, and in that light, is strangely uplifting.