'The Remarkable Life of Ibelin' review: Netflix doc is powerful, life-affirming

WHAT IT'S ABOUT The documentary "The Remarkable Life of Ibelin" tells the story of Mats Steen, a Norwegian man with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, who found friendship and purpose and joy in a community of friends built around the "World of Warcraft" role-playing video game.

Steen died at the age of 25 in 2014, but left behind a password to his blog for his family, who knew nothing of his online identity. From his extraordinarily vivid, expansive writing — combined with a sudden barrage of emails from all of the people he impacted through the game — they were given the great gift of discovering so much more about him.

This alone would have made for a compelling movie, but the director Benjamin Ree finds a way into the story that lifts it toward something greater. Utilizing exhaustive game logs of conversations and more, the filmmaker works with animators to re-create Steen's digital universe as his fictional character, a tall, muscular private investigator named Ibelin.

MY SAY At their core, movies are all about bringing interior worlds to life, using the available filmmaking tools to allow for audience members to be immersed in another person's existence. They are a way to make the universe seem smaller, for the gulfs that develop between people to be bridged, and for a greater and more collective understanding to emerge.

That's not to suggest that every movie achieves this, or even aspires to do so. It is, in fact, an exceedingly rare occurrence.

But sometimes you discover something like "The Remarkable Life of Ibelin," a movie that exemplifies this very best and most fundamental ideal.

It begins with a person constrained by his body, dealt the wrenching hand of this debilitating disease. But it refuses to allow for Mats to be defined by it. Instead, the movie lives within the "Warcraft" universe, where Mats as Ibelin offers what he calls his "soul, heart and mind" to his community of friends. 

It buttresses this with the great gift of his writing, treated as voice-over on-screen, expressing his desire to matter somehow, someway, to someone, even if his time on this planet seemed destined to be cut cruelly short. 

The movie shows us just how much that wish, that purpose, came true.

We witness first kisses and long runs, and deep conversations. We meet some of the people whose lives Mats impacted, including a mother and son brought together thanks to his counsel, and a close friend and first crush who recounts a time where Mats wrote a letter to her parents, asking them to restore her computer access, and thereby helping her through a serious bout of depression.

When it comes to Mats himself, the filmmaker never shies away from the difficulties, or the fear, or the sadness. How could you, when you have to live with it every day?

But that makes it all the more extraordinary to watch as Mats refuses to succumb to the darkness, as he pushes against it, as he makes every moment count.

BOTTOM LINE A powerful, life-affirming work. Don't miss it.