Skywalkers: A Love Story Review: An Expertly Crafted Tale of Love’s Dizzying Intoxication

There is little else more risky in this life than falling in love.

The intoxicating, exhilarating seduction of blossoming romance is deadly. Most victims swept up in it will cautiously look over their shoulder at the countless days that have passed and wonder how those moments soaked up in one another have so swiftly melded into building a life.

Jeff Zimbalist and Maria Bukhonina take this feeling to — quite literally — new heights in their Sundance Grand Jury Prize-nominated documentary for Netflix, Skywalkers: A Love Story.

Zimbalist and Bukhonina follow the adventures of Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus, one daring couple who have made a living out of climbing the world's tallest skyscrapers and documenting their follies online.

Nikolau grew up in a circus performer family but made her love for entertaining her own by taking the acrobatics sky-high and photographing herself in impossible, heartstopping poses.

Beerkus matches her symbiotically, describing the sensation of climbing as, "The higher I went, the easier it was to breathe". The riskier the stunt, the more Beerkus felt he was reaching the thing he was always destined for, even if he could not articulate what that was.

Skywalkers: A Love Story drops us at the heart of their whirlwind romance, where a common interest between Nikolau and Beerkus becomes a love language.

When caught in the jaws of love, it feels as though your partner is the only one who understands the intricate nuances of who you are — often even more than you know yourself. For Nikolau and Beerkus, this gets taken above and beyond what most of us can comprehend.

Not only must they trust one another with their hearts, but also their lives as they pursue the pulse-pounding adrenaline of their profession in one another.

The opening half of Zimbalist and Bukhonina's documentary feels impossibly fast. Almost too fast. However, it quickly becomes evident that pace is intentional poetry designed to document the all-encompassing feeling of how love moves at the speed of light.

There's an effervescence and carelessness present that beckons us into the chaos with them, and only we, as outsiders — victims of heartbreak ourselves — know to flinch. Not only at the astonishing POV shots of hundreds of meters of open space beneath us, but also the feeling crafted by Zimbalist and Bukhonina, who liken young, early love to the freedom Nikolau and Beerkus get from climbing.

The younger you are, both in love and in life, the more you lean into what feels dangerous. You needn't worry about the inevitability of putting one foot wrong and falling into eternal darkness. After all, youth is infinite.

At some point, though, that sweet feeling must all come crashing down.

Narratively, that violent halt comes in the form of the pandemic, removing freedom from our skywalkers, who now face the harsh reality that their career and their love are on fragile ground.

Like in love, when that adrenaline is stripped back and forced to face reality, tensions rise. Our lovers meet at a crossroads. Will they stay and thicken the foundation of what they have built, or will they flee and seek that flighty feeling elsewhere?

This moment is where the magic of what Zimbalist and Bukhonina have been conditioning us for truly shines.

The documentary's third act is about Nikolau and Beerkus' attempt to pull off their most ambitious stunt to date — a dirty dancing style lift atop the 679-meter-high Merdeka 118 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

What follows from that decision is an edge-of-the-seat nailbiter that has you simultaneously glued to your seat and wanting to leave the theater altogether.

But nestled within the suspense is a lesson about the necessity of trust and how important it is that we lean into the quiet, gentle love we often find ourselves rejecting out of fear of boredom. There is romance and intimacy in safety that cannot coexist with moving a mile a minute in giddy glee. Only in slowing down is this feeling found.

That emotion is entirely down to Zimbalist and Bukhonina's bold approach to make the rhythm of their film embody the dizziness of falling head over heels in love. Not only do they ask their audience to go on this journey with their subjects, but they offer us a chance to feel every step — we are not just spectators but active participants. Only we needn't risk our lives, or our hearts, to feel it.

The decision to give this film its stint in IMAX is worthwhile because a grand love story deserves the feeling that comes exclusively from the theatrical experience. Without giving Skywalkers: A Love Story your full attention, you won't capture what Zimbalist and Bukhonina have so expertly crafted.