Love is quite literally in the air for Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus. They’re the daredevil Russian couple who make a living “rooftopping”, as in they illegally climb up spires and cranes mounted atop skyscrapers. And then they express their affection in breathtakingly delicate poses, embracing each other while holding on to the ledge as if with their fingertips; all for the ’gram.
They flaunt that Bonnie & Clyde romance in Skywalkers: A Love Story, a doc that is alternately propulsive, trite and uplifting as it builds up towards the day in 2022 when Nikolau and Beerkus scaled the world’s second-tallest skyscraper. The viral moment, captured with selfie sticks and drone cameras from Kuala Lumpur’s Merdeka 118, didn’t just attract headlines but also immediate questions from authorities who wondered how the couple got past the building’s security and whether the couple perhaps faked their purported feat.
Nikolau and Beerkus have receipts, of course; the most convincing one being this several-years-in-the-making documentary. But such interrogations of authenticity remain the most fascinating thread throughout Skywalkers. This, after all, is a documentary about social media influencers whose lives become carefully composed content. Hell, their relationship in effect began as sponsored content.
A travel brand encouraged Beerkus – then an extreme solo performer who would scale ice-covered cranes to the detriment of our nervous system – to seek out a female counterpart for his material. He landed on Nikolau, the daughter of circus performers who brought touches of ballet, acrobatics and an all-around artistry to her own rooftopping pictures. He pushed her to greater heights. She brought him a touch of class. Conveniently, or perhaps curiously, the sparks begin to fly right around the time the cameras started rolling on Jeff Zimbalist and Maria Bukhonina’s documentary.
Skywalkers often can’t shake those reality TV/Love Is Blind vibes. So much of it is about an enviably hot couple staging their romance in front of the most spectacular sunset views. Occasionally, they have conversations between themselves, and the people around them, that can feel artificial and coaxed for the camera. During one rooftop exchange, Beerkus starts speaking in tropes, dramatically suggesting that the inevitable Merdeka mission be their one last job. Nikolau looks back at him with what comes across as genuine frustration. “Let’s stop now,” she says, as if calling cut. “We’re talking complete bullshit.”
To their credit, Beerkus and Nikolau are often too real for such gimmicks, which is why scenes when they play into the narrative tropes this genre demands are so awkward. The most compelling scenes, like the exchange mentioned above, chip away at that performativity and their precise but belaboured compositions, and peer over at what’s typically meant to be out of frame. And it just so happens those moments can take place when Beerkus and Nikolau are dangling over the edge, like when they’re arguing about composition – specifically how to get a shot of Nikolau’s leg that meets her high expectations – while thousands of feet in the air.
We’re struggling with vertigo. They’re bickering about angles.
Skywalkers obviously has its thrills as far as stunt footage goes, most captured with the tiny cameras Beerkus wears on his head. We ride shotgun as the couple evade security, make their way up anything that can be climbed (as well as the things that shouldn’t be climbed); and get into foot chases that end in arrest or injury. It’s so easy to get caught up in the fun that you forget many of their rooftopping peers didn’t make it. When Skywalkers does bring up the casualties who died chasing this frivolous social media high, it’s about setting the stakes for Nikolau and Beerkus’s own escapades, rather than grappling with the ethics behind the illegal stunts the film romanticizes.
The film isn’t grasping for deeper conversations, nor does it ever get comfortable in the negative space where a more fascinating movie might live. The years Nikolau and Beerkus spend grounded due to the pandemic – working as everyday social media influencers rather than the gravity-defying kind – and then watching the Russia-Ukraine war break out, are quickly montaged over. There’s even a breakup somewhere in between that only warrants brief mention. You get the impression they are only comfortable sharing their lives when they’re perched above where the rest of us live.
But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find them swoon-worthy, never mind the cryptocurrencies and branded partnerships circling their pursuits. Footage of the couple rehearsing the dizzying swan lift they eventually execute at the top of Merdeka has a casual Dirty Dancing energy. And the moment they pull it off, and sweep into a kiss so perfectly staged for Instagram, feels transcendent, even with a selfie stick in hand.
Skywalkers: A Love Story is available on Netflix on 19 July
