Review: "The Remarkable Life of Ibelin"

This is a unique and emotional movie that will persist in your mind long after the closing scene and end credits roll.

The Remarkable Life of Ibelin is indeed remarkable, both for the life story at its core and in the mesmerizing way it's brought to screen. It starts with home videos, played forward then rewound when the tale takes an unexpected turn, and woven in again as Mats' story is retold, infusing each previously seen image with an entirely new meaning.

It's an ingenious way to visualize the feeling Mats' loved ones must have had when they realized everything they thought they knew about his life was incomplete.

How brave and generous of them, then, to share this story. They learned that Mats' short existence held essential messages about the values and experiences that give life meaning. In the hands of a different director, those messages could have been heavy-handed or been undermined by judging virtual life as somehow less than IRL.

As the muscular Ibelin runs through fields and flirts with girls, "breaking the chains" of what real-life Mats could actually do, it all becomes clear. Benjamin Ree uses their dialogue archives to bring their shared past in an online fantasy world to life through new animations. Several different people explain how their digital lives with "Ibelin" supplemented and improved their real lives.

It adds up to a heartrending, inventive, and unforgettable movie and life story.

Read the full review on Common Sense Media

Images courtesy of Netflix