The online world has become ubiquitous to the point that movies set in the present day cannot ignore its omnipresence. Spies break into firewalls as often as buildings, thrillers have to establish why the characters can’t simply Google answers, and high school comedies turn on social media posts. Yet movies that depict interaction inside a virtual space often remain in the far-off future mode of Ready Player One, not too far from the amusing early Internet mumbo jumbo of The Lawnmower Man. Documentary The Remarkable Life of Ibelin grasps the modern feeling of sustained online interaction and the potential for meaningful existence in a virtual space.
Mats Steen spent almost all of his short life struggling with the muscular dystrophy that confined him to a wheelchair and made interaction with the world a daunting challenge. He spent thousands of hours playing video games, particularly the online role-playing game World of Warcraft. When he died at age 25, his loving parents saw him as an isolated soul, his physical limitations having forced him away from many of life’s interactions and created a barrier to relationships. That is, until they used the password that Steen bequeathed to them.
In a simple but touching maneuver, the movie rewinds itself, backtracking over the home video footage we see of Steen navigating and tolerating a real world where speech and connection elude him, then restarts his story to incorporate a rich life of interactions in World of Warcraft via his hunky avatar named Ibelin Redmoore. Ibelin, unbeknownst to Steen’s parents, has many close friends within the game (and even a few paramours) and the days upon days of time spent in front of the screen represented a parallel lifetime. Steen’s blog and 42,000 pages of saved text from his gaming interactions form the script for retelling the life of Steen as Ibelin.
Much like 2022 documentary We Met in Virtual Reality, Ibelin takes the denizens of a virtual world on their own terms (much has been pondered about the role of the camera on documentary subjects, we haven’t even begun to consider documentary footage recorded with no camera present). Director Benjamin Ree (Magnus, The Painter and the Thief) does much of his “filming” using accounts of chats within the virtual realms of the game to animate scenes with the Ibelin character and his gaming compatriots in their charmingly awkward character poses. There’s novelty to the most trivial interactions within virtual space, the flirtations, petty squabbles, and social betrayals. And Ibelin’s interactions spill back into the meat space where Steen otherwise struggles to thrive, as Ree interviews Ibelin’s online friends about how his advice and empathy brightened their offline lives as well.
Ree doesn’t soft-pedal the poignancy of a man whose body struggled with basic interactions in life becoming a debonaire figure in the world of the game. The tearjerker ending to a remarkable life may be inevitable, but that makes it no less powerful.
The Remarkable Life of Ibelin can be streamed on Netflix.
About the writer
C. D. Ploughman
The weary Ploughman is a writer and filmmaker, focusing these days on documentary and educational projects. He obsesses over movies with his very patient wife and children.
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Conversation
What Did We Watch?
Groundhog Day – Not a Christmas movie, amirite? It was supposed to be Strahd Night, but our DM had a holiday party to attend, and said “hey, since you are stuck in a Groundhog Day scenario, you should watch that movie till I escape from the party.” Only a) she was actually having a good time there; and b) it is a good thing she stayed since someone there took a nasty fall and she used her EMT training to literally save the person’s life! So no game again, but hey, there are worse things to do than watch this movie. The structure of it is really quite solid, and I can say how it could be made into a musical (which my wife loves). But never noticed before how incredibly white this movie is. Also, sunrise in Punxsutawney on Feb 2 is 7:25 am. It should be pitch dark when Phil wakes up.
Holy cow, are we sure your DM isn’t also living out a Groundhog Day scenario, “just happening” to be in the party where help is needed?
All-time great movie. I’ve said it before, but Phil’s transformation works so well because Murray doesn’t change his approach to the character, he just changes what the character decides to do.
I had the same thought. I bet she did too.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade – not sure I’ve ever watched these three movies in such close proximity before. In that context, I think this is actually the best of the three, whereas I would always have ranked it behind Raiders in the past. Part of that might be because it can draw from the first movie’s characters without having to set up who they are in relation to Indy, admittedly. But for the most part this one just has the best pacing – it is a relentless good time, and throwing in Sean Connery gives it an extra level of fun (he’s clearly having such a good time) and also adds some welcome emotional undercurrents. Now to decide whether I can be bothered to rewatch Crystal Skull… hmm.
Each time I’ve rewatched Crystal Skull, I’ve gone in thinking “this is a waste of time” and come out thinking of it a bit more fondly than that (knowing everything is going to lead to a big, noisy nothing of an ending isn’t helpful, but it’s fun in the moment.)
I thought I’d only seen it once, but Letterboxd makes fools of us all – apparently I rewatched it in 2020 (a year I obviously remember fondly) and came away with a similar feeling, plenty of good stuff in the moment even if it occasionally makes terrible decisions.
Crystal What? Last Crusade ends with them riding into the sunset! It’s over!
I’m so glad to hear this is now available to watch. When you first mentioned it in your festival roundup post I was immediately interested. I’ve often wondered if the online personas people choose are who they would like to be in real life, or who they actually are but are afraid to show?
IT’S NOT CALLED THE PENULTIMATE CRUSADE, PAL
What We Do in the Shadows, “The Promotion” and “The Finale”
The final two episodes of the show, ever! (Or as Laszlo might say, evARRRRRRR!)
I don’t think I have enough time or energy to write them up in a way that’ll do them justice, though, so I may have to revisit this when I do.
Apparently in the finale there are multiple fakeout endings that aired at different times depending on when you watched the episode. I got the Newhart ending on Hulu. My favorite detail from the fakeout is that Nandor and Guillermo are wearing the exact same pajamas as Bob Newhart and Suzanne Pleshette were.
Bob’s Burgers, “They Slug Horses, Don’t They?” and “Dog Christmas Day After Afternoon”
Louise and Tina get into a feud in the first one. In the second, the family is on the clock to save a dog in the neighborhood after Gene accidentally feeds it chocolate. It’s Bob’s— still love the show, but not gonna have a whole lot to say about it most weeks.
Credits gags, first episode: Gongs, Baby, Gongs; Squeakret Service
Credits gags, second episode: Who’s the Moss? (Terrariums); The Bee-Sting Boys
American Dad!, “An Adult Woman” and “Piece By Piece”
Hayley is denied a rescue hamster because the woman in charge of the, uh, hamster rescue society, I guess, doesn’t think she’s adult enough for the responsibility. To prove otherwise, she helps out a new persona of Roger’s– “Barney Bux,” business deals guy. He has a 13-year-old daughter named Gilda who’s obsessed with Dirty Dancing, which is also one of Hayley’s favorite movies, so she decides to take on the challenge of helping Gilda through it… her obsession is obviously caused by her maturing and feeling strange new feelings about boys, right? Well, maybe Hayley should listen to her to find out.
Almost no one else appears in this episode, except Klaus briefly at the beginning and end… and a hilariously dark gag that caps off the episode.
In the next one, the family sans Stan heads to the community center– Steve tells Stan he’s playing rugby, which of course isn’t going to be true; he’s playing the cello in the orchestra, conducted by Roger as the Maestro. Then Stan comes to a performance and actually likes it and connects with Steve. He’s proud of him! …and that sends Roger into a fugue where he attacks Steve, and so the three of them decide to get to the bottom of why. Featuring a trip to Germany and some characters I don’t want to spoil.
Meanwhile, Francine and Hayley take up butchering at the community center to deal with what Francine says is, apparently medically diagnosed, “female rage.” And Jeff builds a birdhouse, but then somehow gets a bunch of asshole bird tenants.
St. Denis Medical, “Ho-Ho-Hollo”
Pretty fun Christmas-time episode– maybe the first where all the characters are really clicking. (Although for some reason I don’t recall seeing Val.) Alex and Ron have a favorite patient named Bob (David Paymer), who came in for hip pain after a fall and is also battling leukemia, which is why his kids are there rallying around him… though Alex and Ron uncover a dark secret about Bob (gradually, which makes it even funnier). Ron isn’t going to visit his kids for Christmas, which he acts like he’s fine with, but of course he’s not really– he’s not going because his ex-wife is going to be there, and he does miss not being closer to his kids. It kinda serves as a parallel to Bob’s arc, which makes it even funnier when Ron keeps unraveling Bob’s story.
Meanwhile, Bruce and Matt have to… well, remove an engagement ring from a penis (Scott MacArthur plays the penis’ owner). How they go about it is pretty great; Bruce is moving up alongside Ron as the MVP of the show so far. And Matt seems to finally be settling in to nursing nicely, based on his crack to Serena when she offers to switch duties with him. (“Nope. I’m emotionally invested. It’s all of our penis now.”)
And Serena is trying to help Joyce get St. Denis’ social media to go viral– virality means more followers, more attention, and hopefully more money and resources. Joyce’s ideas are all terrible and wildly out of date, but Serena finally gives in and helps her make a lip-dub video around the office (to an absolute classic, Jackie Wilson’s “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher”). That was actually surprisingly fun to watch– I enjoyed it better than The Office’s lip dub, anyway. The show really seems to be rounding into form well already. After the sadly aborted run of American Auto, it looks like we might be on our way to having a true successor to Superstore.
The Shield, “Back to One” and “The New Guy”
“Posters on the wall were all wack. White boys in these gay poses. One of them was called, like, 65 Degrees or something.”
M*A*S*H, Season One, Episode Two, “To Market, To Market”
One little thing about this show is that the very details of the plot both enhance and are enhanced by the typical genre needs of 70’s-era sitcoms. Famously, this show changed tones over time; I think it was largely the music (which is very 60’s at this point), but I must definitely acknowledge the slightly different action. This is obviously all building to the very silly image of a desk flying away under a helicopter (which always made my Dad laugh when he saw it), and indeed the specific image of Henry charging into his office, checking his booze, then noticing his desk is missing, then finally noticing his back wall is gone (then cutting to Frank reacting with complete shock), but the buildup is all fairly typical scheming.
Obviously, there’s some realism with this (the show always drew heavily on real-life stories), but even without that, one would very much have the myth of scheming Americans, and the specific details only enhance the thematics. I’m always tickled by how Koreans are generally presented as talking like hustlers off the streets of New York; there’s an obvious anti-racist message there in how they’re ‘just like us’ and able to outsmart white Americans who underestimate them (indeed, there’s a great gag where the Korean-accented John Soo fakes an even more over-the-top accent to fool Henry).
But it’s also part of the show’s take on The System, where it’s generally underhanded scheming, lying, and stealing that gets anything done. One fascinating thing is how Hawk and Trap are very much ‘policing’ doctorin’, aiming to punish laziness and incompetence – not a negative thing or even hypocrisy, just an observation. After that, though, they’re using every underhanded scheme to get the medical supplies they need; a moral and practical issue. Henry’s evil here is weakness, not being able to argue against the higher brass or commit to any kind of decision.