SKYWALKERS: A LOVE STORY - Mark Reviews Movies

Skywalkers: A Love Story, Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 18, 2024

The presence of a camera inherently changes how people act. Documentary filmmakers have had to wrestle with this reality of attempting to capture real life and real people since the form came to be, and rarely has that fact been more noticeable and at the front of one's viewing of a documentary than in Skywalkers: A Love Story.

It's about two people who live for the camera and also rooftop, the term that has developed for those who climb tall, manmade structures without the aid of any safety equipment. It has become something of a phenomenon, despite—or because of—the obvious danger and the illegality of such endeavors. To point out that people have been seriously injured and died while attempting to climb a tall building without the aid of a harness is probably unnecessary. One of the subjects here learns that every member of her former rooftopping crew has died or been severely hurt during one of their efforts, and even that doesn't stop her from wanting to scale Merdeka 118 in Kuala Lumpur.

For context, that skyscraper is, as the name suggests, 118 stories tall—2,233 feet, if one counts the spire atop the roof, which these climbers certainly do. Only one other building in the world is taller, and while most would look at it simply as an architectural feat of the sort that's becoming less practical, Angela Nikolau and Ivan "Vanya" Beerkus, two Russian rooftoppers who dub themselves the more glamorous term "skywalkers," see it as an opportunity they can't pass.

Here's the thing about Nikolau and Beerkus, who started climbing together and dating soon after that. They're not just modern-day daredevils and self-proclaimed artists. They're also and, perhaps, more importantly social media influencers, who have become famous in certain circles and made more than a good amount of money in sponsorships for their stunts. The movie builds to the two climbing Merdeka 118, after the sponsorship cash diminished and travel to various structures became more difficult on account of the COVID-19 pandemic.

There's a certain cynicism at the core of this documentary, directed by Jeff Zimbalist (co-directed by Maria Bukhonina). Maybe it's just that rooftopping seems an especially and unnecessarily dangerous kind of "sport." Yes, people climb mountains unhindered by safety equipment, too. It's also perilous, obviously, and confusing for those with a healthy sense of self-preservation, but the basic appeal of climbing a natural formation seems, well, natural in some way. Climbing a skyscraper, primarily so that one can get plenty of photos and video footage to share on social media, just feels artificial from the get-go.

It doesn't help that Nikolau and Beerkus are doing this mainly for the attention. Sure, she says that she sees it as an extension of a circus performance, being the child of two circus performers, and maybe there's an argument to be made that her poses in flowing outfits at the top of a building have some artistic merit. What's the statement, though, apart from Nikolau doing it and getting a lot of people to follow her social media account? When Russia invades Ukraine during the timeline of the documentary, she and Beerkus say that they want to make some kind of statement against the war. As soon as the subject of government censorship arises, though, the desire to say anything conveniently vanishes.

These two come across as a couple who want attention first and foremost. That's fine for them, and it might be fine for the movie if they were simply honest about that fact. Instead, they talk around the subject, offering some hollow sentiments about creating art and other such things, but the more revealing statements come almost by accident. Nikolau and Beerkus meet, for example, because she started trying to one-up the more experienced rooftooper's climbs for views, and he noticed she was gaining a following. During the lull in income, there's a shot of Beerkus discovering a way of directly monetizing photos and videos from a climb, and apart from the fact that the scene looks staged, those wide eyes at the prospect of money say a lot.

There's good reason to doubt the sincerity of these two, in other words, because so little about them feels honest. That we start to doubt some of the filmmaking tactics because of that is unfortunate.

There is some stunning, terrifying, and very real footage assembled here, as the subjects' careers individually and as a pair are presented. With cameras strapped to and held by and controlled via drone by the two, the movie shows us in authentic and vertiginous detail what it means to climb the Eiffel Tower, the cathedral of Notre-Dame, random buildings and cranes, and, of course, that Malaysian super-skyscraper. All of it may seem gratuitous, but there's little denying the effect of the footage, which makes up a sizeable portion of the documentary.

Almost everything surrounding it, though, feels disingenuous (Even the disclaimer that no one should attempt these acts is undermined by step-by-step instructions of how to break into such a structure). It's amusing that some claim one climb by the central pair of Skywalkers: A Love Story was faked. It clearly wasn't, but the movie gives one reason to suspect some other stuff outside of the climbing was or is.

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