Skywalkers: A Love Story

Skywalkers: A Love Story: The characterization of the protagonists in this film as daredevils who would risk their lives just for the purpose of seeking social network likes is the complete opposite of the films Man on Wire, Free Solo, or Fire of Love. As the title suggests, writer Jeff Zimbalist doesn’t mind framing this as a Skywalkers: A Love Story about couples who post pics from the top of the skyscrapers they are relieving themselves on Instagram.

While many of them do it themselves and repeat it throughout the story, they seem to reduce everything to a matter of trust and intimacy – something common in almost every other couple. We can never really get comfortable with the relationship between the couple because while it makes it absolutely clear – no matter what deceptions about photoshop may be – this pair does climb to the highest and the most recognized buildings of the world, there is slightly disturbing untruthfulness to the narration.

In Russia, Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus where both in search of ‘rooftoping’, a trend of some sorts which is comparably similar to ‘flagpole sitting’, but a few hundred feet up in the air with a multitude of audiences and a lot more dangerous.

Rooftoppers are different, and their philosophy is reversed. ‘Just because it’s there’ is no reason for them to climb a mountain. But they want skyscrapers because even what lies above 3000 meters is not enough for them.

The film opens in 2019 introducing Nikolau and Beerkus, a power couple who ambitiously aspire to reach the apex of Merdeka 118, the second highest building in the world. It was still under construction. Then the plot shifted to how Nikolau and Beerkus met, developed, and the love and life challenges they faced together along with a lot of physical action.

Growing up in a circus family, Nikolau always admired her parents, aerialists who performed
together on a flying trapeze. Unfortunately, her father abandoned them for another woman, which caused her mother’s emotional breakdown. Now raised by her grandmother, Nikolau determined never to be reliant on others again.

However, she became lost and indecisive regarding the course of her life until she stumbled upon rooftop pictures on Instagram. All those people were men. This was her destiny. “I was in awe seeing their spirit, their freedom. These are people who have no fear, have no limits… I realize that I already found my act. That is my trapeze.”

She aimed to climb higher and more dangerous places than the men while performing more extraordinary social media stunts in which she would wear high heels and strike impossible yoga poses. During all this, it would be good to interject sky-high her looks: Nikolau is incredibly beautiful.

The thrill of the ascent was something Beerkus enjoyed. He says the more mounds he scaled, the easier he was able to get air. He was one of the most followed people on Instagram in all of Russia. And it is from Instagram that she first spotted Nikolau.

He liked her pictures and asked her to go with him to China to climb the world’s highest building construction site for which he would be sponsored. They had met while travelling to their respective destinations from different places. And as Nikolau begins posting her pictures online, she instantly receives millions of fans and several sponsorship requests. What better way to find one’s soulmate than this?

What an entertaining montage. They are making love in a bubble bath, and dancing, and munching on some takeouts. And then goes the sequence of them climbing, then posting, and getting jailed. And oh, they are also seen rather nonchalantly mentioning one of their colleagues from the rooftopping community had died After Season 2 ends.

But what have they learned from this? That maybe this is one way to put it, and they are likely to encourage others to endanger themselves so as to achieve fame and popularity. That maybe global catastrophic occurrences such as the war going on between Russia and Ukraine and the pandemic are not just issues to ignore as they continue flipping their Instagram pages’ narrative and redefining rooftop climbing to skywalking.

Firstly, the film omitted any such opportunities — the footage used was disturbing but the highlights were cut, however, it would be interesting to learn where the footage was sourced from, especially when there is footage of private conversations, and how such incidents relate to the issue of copycats, who might not be as fortunate or clever as this couple.

They’ve managed to speak to other rooftopartists who ended up killing themselves and told them that they are more disappointed about sponsor loss, and their work being blown out of proportion as an example. They say they have been shown how to be more effective in evading security, how to look like builders, use screwdrivers over cameras, how to climb at the time of the World Cup to ensure minimal disturbance.

The climbers are not the only ones who are casual about the potentially deadly attacks to these activities; there are also the filmmakers who light-heartedly score the last section of the film with music, while a voice over explains that it follows the completion of a 30 plus hours climb. The ascents are certainly there, if staged. But the film itself though is as fake as turf — Here is a couple which keeps repeating the theme of trust and embracing reliance so much, and they also come up with such clumsy images explaining how trapeze artists have more strong men, in the role of the catcher of Skywalkers: A Love Story, who is less visible and glitzy than the flyer.

One encounter with a Ukrainian refugee who is also a clown for circus, seems genuine for a split of a second but it appears very obvious that Nikolau does not comprehend how she is quite narcissistic. Zimbalist (occasional rooftopper) and the co-director Maria Bukhonina absolve all doubts that the acts of variety they portray are real but the characters are always one notch above a figurative cut out.

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