Skywalkers: A Love Story (2024)

Skywalkers-A-Love-Story-(2024)
Skywalkers: A Love Story (2024)

Skywalkers: A Love Story

Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus are not your typical love birds. The two daredevils will do anything to get a like on a social media platform. They claim that their extreme stunts are pictures of their love, but the world knows better. Skywalkers is a documentary about two adrenaline junkies who climb skyscrapers just so they can post pictures on Instagram. Throughout the film, Zimbalist repeatedly says that it all represents the same problems with trust and closeness every couple faces but we never really buy it. We don’t buy it because, while the movie definitely proves beyond any reasonable doubt (despite some claims of Photoshopping) that they do scale the tallest structures in the world, there’s something fake about how this story is told.

It starts with some 2019 footage of Nikolau and Beerkus getting ready to climb to the top of Merdeka 118 in Malaysia, then under construction and soon to be MCU film “Thunderbolts”. Then we learn a little bit about their individual histories before they met and all the literal ups and downs of their relationship.

Nikolau grew up in a circus family, she watched her parents fly through the air together on a trapeze. But her father left for another woman “and my mom never got over it.” She was raised by her grandmother, who taught her never to rely on others, but without anyone to depend on herself, Angela couldn’t figure out what direction her life should take until she saw people posting photos from high above street level on Instagram. “All men,” she notes with an eye roll, “but I knew where I belonged Seeing their passion, their freedom” She trails off “They take crazy risks just to feel alive.” “I knew I had found my performance. This is my trapeze.”

She would climb in high heels and striking costumes if it meant outdoing the guys, if it meant performing for her social media following and no one else.

Beerkus loved climbing and the feeling of being on top. For him, breathing was easier at higher altitudes. He had the most Instagram followers in Russia. So it was on Instagram that he found Nikolau. She blew him away with her posts and he invited her to join him on a sponsored trip to China where they would climb the tallest construction site in the world together. They met for the first time on the way there. Once pictures are posted, Nikolau gains hundreds of thousands of new followers and some sponsorship offers what could be a purer form of love?

There’s a rom com style flutter of clips they’re in a bubble bath together, they’re dancing, they’re snacking on street food. We see them climbing and posting and getting thrown in jail, we also see them almost casually noting that one of their fellow rooftoppers has fallen to his death. But have they learned anything from this? Not that maybe this is dangerous and will inspire others to risk their lives, not that maybe huge world events like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the pandemic are about more than interfering with our social media posts and our rebranding of rooftopping as skywalking. The film would have been much more interesting if it pulled back the curtain on how all this footage is coming to us especially footage of some very private conversations and wrestled with encouraging copycats who may not be quite as good at climbing or quite as lucky.

They’re far more upset about losing sponsors than other rooftoppers losing lives. All they tell us they learn is how to do a better job staying out of trouble themselves dressing like construction workers, covering security cameras, bringing bolt cutters, planning a climb during the World Cup when no one will be paying attention.

It’s not just the climbers who seem blase about these stunts having lethal consequences, it’s also the filmmakers themselves, who accompany the 30+ hour climb at the end of the film with a jaunty, breezy tune on the soundtrack. The climbs are real, if performative. But the movie itself feels as real as astroturf, with the couple relentlessly reiterating trust and reliance and ham handed metaphors about how for trapeze artists it’s less flashy but more important to have a strong man as your “catcher” than a “flyer.” One interaction with a Ukrainian refugee who is also a circus clown feels almost authentic for a moment but clearly Nikolau has no idea that she comes across as completely self centered. Clearly Zimbalist (a sometime rooftopper himself) and his co-director Maria Bukhonina want us to know that these stunts are real but never get beyond an airbrushed version of their subjects.

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