Good documentaries engage us and then let us get to know more their subjects, but Netflix documentary film “Skywalkers: A Love Story”, which was released in last month, feels rather and hollow in my trivial opinion. Sure, there are a series of remarkable moments which will make you feel dizzy and tense at times during your viewing, if you are afraid of high places as much as I am. However, the documentary does not delve much into what makes its two human subjects tick – or how they have bonded with each other.

They are young Russian rooftoppers Ivan Beerkus and Angela Nikolau, who frequently draw lots of attention on the Internet whenever they try and then succeed in their highly risky (and usually unauthorized) public stunts during last several years. Without any particular safety measure, this couple climbed onto the top of many different tall buildings around the world, and the documentary opens with how they are planning to embark on one of their most ambitious projects at a certain well-known skyscraper in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

What Beerkus and Nikolau are going to do is not just climbing on the top of that skyscraper. Once they reach to their destination, they are going to photograph themselves doing some risky things before eventually going down to the ground later, and it goes without saying that their photographs will surely go viral on the Internet if they succeed.

Of course, they cannot possibly be permitted to climb up there, and we get to know more about the considerable legal risks they are going to take. For not getting caught and then arrested for imprisonment, they must carefully plan how they should infiltrate into that skyscraper, and they must also be prepared for any unexpected setback on their way to the top. For avoiding getting noticed by anyone in the building, they decided to try on the night of a big World Cup match, but there is still always the risk, and we later see them having to wait for several hours within a very small spot where they have to evade being noticed by anyone.

The early part of the documentary focuses a bit on these two young persons’ respective backgrounds. In case of Nikolau, she was the daughter of two circus performers, and she was quite interested in doing risky stuffs even when she was very young. When she heard about Beerkus and his fellow Russian rooftoppers, she quickly became determined to go all the way for rooftopping, and it did not take much time for Beerkus to notice how competent and competitive she was. In the end, he invited her to join his latest project, and Nikolau grabbed the offer even though she did not know that much about him.

What follows next is how Nikolau and Beerkus fell in love with each other as they pushed each other more and more via their shared passion and understanding. Both of them became more popular on the Internet thanks to their following joint projects, and we see them appearing on not only Russian TV programs but also American ones.

However, their fun time did not last that long around the early 2020s, which will be forever remembered for the COVID-19 Pandemic. Due to the pandemic, Beerkus and Nikolau could not easily travel around the world anymore, and, naturally, they came to suffer a considerable financial problem as they came to lose their sponsors. At one point, Beerkus’ concerned parents suggest that he should really get a real job which actually pays, but that is still the last thing he wants.

Of course, there is also the Russian Invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. While showing a bit of how their country is thrown into considerable turmoil as a consequence, both Nikolau and Beerkus curiously keep themselves from expressing any direct opinion on that. Considering that he is partially Ukrainian, Beerkus may actually have something he wants to say, but the documentary does not delve much into that possibly sensitive issue, and neither does he or Nikolau.

In the end, the documentary comes to focus again on their aforementioned project in Kuala Lumpur, but it simply sticks to their narrow viewpoint without providing any particular counterpoint opinions on their apparently reckless stunt. Sure, they are really serious and passionate about their project, but they do not seem aware that much of the dire possible consequences of their many risky activities, and the documentary simply recognizes that grim aspect a bit without really facing it.

Furthermore, Nikolau and Beerkus are sometimes a little too self-aware of how they are presented in front of the cameras. We later observe a bit of their personal conflict caused by her accidental physical injury which occurred in the middle of their preparation stage, but this conflict is soon resolved rather easily as they keep blatantly emphasizing on how inseparable they are from each other. While I guess their relationship is really based on a lot of love and comradeship, they are sadly not very interesting figures to observe from the beginning, and I cannot help but observe instead how narcissistic and superficial they are just like millions of digital influencers and creators out there.

In conclusion, “Skywalkers: A Love Story”, directed by Jeff Zimbalist and Maria Bukhonina, is not satisfying enough for recommendation, but whatever they vividly captured via their cameras is still a good selling point. Sure, these striking moments will remain in my mind for a long time, but the human figures behind them are not compelling enough to hold my attention, and that is a shame.