Eons ago, a wise philosopher named Scott Stapp turned his head to the heavens and screamed, “Can you take me higher?/to a place where blind men see/Can you take me higher?/to a place with golden streets?”. Whether or not he ever got to those grand heights is unknown. However, daredevil Russian climbers Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus took a different, more active route to reaching those beckoning skies. They’ve dedicated their lives to climbing incredibly tall skyscrapers without harnesses or safety nets. Imagine if the Free Solo guy was also Ethan Hunt mounting the Burj Khalifa in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. That’s this romantically infatuated couple.

Rooftopping is the name of Beerkus and Nikolau’s game, and it’s most certainly a dangerous exercise to which one’s life is devoted. However, for this duo anchoring the new Netflix documentary Skywalkers: A Love Story, the unthinkable is just ordinary reality. Nikolau, especially, was destined to push boundaries and put her safety in jeopardy. After all, she grew up in a circus family, with her bravura mother serving as her idol for how one should exist. Once she got into the rooftopping game, though, she needed a mentor. This is where the experienced Beerkus came into play.

Eventually, their dynamic transformed into something more romantic. Simultaneously, their scaling of iconic massive landmarks turns the duo into celebrity sensations. Everyone loves the couple that smooch and defy vertigo with equal ease. Come 2022, though, Beerkus and Nikolau’s finances are dwindling, and their relationship is under enormous duress. It’s time for “one last job.” The Warisan Merdeka Tower in Malaysia (the second-tallest building in the world) is calling their names. Their skills and love are about to suffer enormous challenges.

Directors Jeff Zimbalist and Maria Bukhonina lean heavily in Skywalkers on imagery captured by Nikolau and Beerkus during their illegal exploits. Shaky body-came footage of the duo running or daintily climbing across cranes fills up the screen. The more grandiose of these shots, namely ones utilizing drones to chronicle the pair atop famous buildings, are staggering. However, the bursts of more ramshackle recordings subtly reinforce the homemade nature of these viral stunts. These are not super-spies with state-of-the-art gadgets. Our leads are using hardware store gear to set climbing records! Unexpected security cameras or construction workers inspired befuddlement in these two. They’re not just constantly leaping over obstacles.

Relying on intimate footage captured in the heat of the moment reaffirms the everyday humans at the center of Skywalkers: A Love Story. Best of all, though, body-cam imagery captured miles off the ground is mighty effective at instilling the stakes of these exercises. These subdued visual reminders of Beerkus and Nikolau’s ordinariness make the inescapable dangerousness extra palpable. For those with even a touch of vertigo, prepare to avert your eyes during such precarious sequences. This heights-challenged critic certainly found herself gulping out loud more than once!

For all the visual splendor of Skywalkers, it’s extra disappointing how much of the proceedings rely on dialogue. The expository voice-over from Nikolau especially overwhelms the feature’s first 30 minutes. Her reflective perspective on growing up hammers home obvious details about her relationships or personality clearly visible on-screen. It’s challenging to enter her world with these intrusive sonic elements at play. A late circus-set sequence also crumbles because of this problem. Incredibly moving images unfold, chronicling Nikolau returning to the kind of location that fostered her lifelong passions. Just the visuals alone stir the heart. We also don’t need narration to spell out why she’s crying in this environment.

The heavy presence of voice-over narration leaves Skywalkers: A Love Story torn between two types of modern documentary cinema. On the one hand, the relentless narration contextualizing everything evokes a classical “talking-heads” approach. However, Zimbalist and Bukhonina clearly want A Love Story, like recent films and TV shows such as Boys State and Ren Faire, to function as a doc mimicking the style of a narrative feature. The second half of the proceedings chronicling preparations to scale Merdeka have editing and dialogue ripped out of an Ocean’s Eleven installment. Late in the runtime, Nikolau experiences “flashbacks” (complete with color tinting to differentiate these images from the present) to her fondest experiences with Beerkus. Even the structure of romantic conflict is more reminiscent of a three-act narrative film rather than the messy reality documentaries often chronicle.

Oscillating between these two modes of documentary cinema doesn’t serve Skywalkers: A Love Story well. Instead, it just makes the feature feel as aloof from reality as a profoundly filtered Instagram post. It doesn’t help that stabs at “topicality” are executed incredibly clumsily. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine (as well as the Ukrainian ancestry of Beerkus) dominates the screen for five minutes. The topic proceeds to vanish, never to re-emerge. Worse, NFTs prove critical to the couple’s financial salvation. Delivering such a straightforward, triumphant depiction of NFTs in 2024 may make Matt Damon proud. However, it doesn’t leave the emotional or monetary struggles of the principal figures extra relatable.

Many people refer to Netflix movies as things you put on in the background while doing laundry or other household tasks. They’re designed for fleeting auditory pleasures, not sustained visual euphoria. Skywalkers: A Love Story is a minor departure from that norm. It’s best watched with the mute button handy! Experienced silently, this documentary’s glorious visuals register as extra impactful. Dare to turn up the volume, though, and the narration and structure problems of Skywalkers become apparent. No wonder this creative endeavor never reaches the meditative heights of Scott Stapp’s yearning to go “higher.”

Skywalkers: A Love Story is currently streaming on Netflix.

Skywalkers: A Love Story Trailer: