How two artists have weathered one stormy marriage

Artists often fall in love with and marry other artists. But what’s it like when one half of the couple is widely acclaimed for their contributions to their field while the other has never quite ‘made it’? There’s a scene in the documentary Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other – a portrait of the marriage between Joel Meyerowitz, who pioneered the use of colour in street photography, and Maggie Barrett, a writer and artist with a much shorter CV – that shows how awkward things can get.

The transatlantic couple – Maggie is British and Joel American – have just made the difficult decision to leave their beloved home of the past decade in rural Tuscany. The trigger was Maggie shattering her femur in a fall and her subsequent diagnosis, at 75, of severe osteoporosis: a harsh reminder that they’re both only getting older and frailer (Joel is nine years her senior) and should probably be living somewhere less remote. They’re on a farewell visit to a nearby town when a young man with a Leica around his neck comes up to Joel to say how much his work has meant to him as a budding photographer in the Philippines. ‘I got my Leica because of Joel,’ he says – since the 1960s, this has been the signature Meyerowitz camera brand. Joel introduces Maggie but the man doesn’t have much to say to her, even as she politely attempts to convey that he is intruding on an emotional moment for the couple. He says he was thinking of asking for a picture, perhaps. Maggie wanders away wordlessly.

Joel Meyerowitz and Maggie Barrett in a still from Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other (2024). © Jacob Perlmutter and Manon Ouimet/Final Cut for Real

This film would not exist without Joel’s international fanbase. Co-directors Jacob Perlmutter and Manon Ouimet (another artist couple) got the idea for their feature-length debut after a similar encounter between Perlmutter and Maggie and Joel on the streets of London. The difference is that the film-makers couldn’t be more interested in both of their subjects – or, more accurately, in the relationship that they have created together. For all their challenges, it’s clear that Joel and Maggie are still as besotted with each other as they were on the day they met: 24 September 1990. The documentary begins with their joint telling of this chance event; Joel was biking in Cape Cod when he spotted Maggie ‘on the other side of the road, just a little spirit of light’. The title comes from a stray thought he shared with her later that night: ‘Here we are, two strangers trying not to kill each other.’ Really, this is a love story.

In a series of beautifully shot and scored vignettes, the film follows the strangers-turned-spouses over the course of a year, documenting both the good times and the bad: first in Tuscany, then New York, then Cornwall. During this time Perlmutter and Ouimet lived alongside them in their homes, setting up cameras (Leicas, in homage to Meyerowitz again) that could also be controlled remotely when the directors weren’t around. There’s no denying the intimacy of the results. Several times we see the couple in bed, spooning or facing each other with hands clasped, one or both asleep, a large framed print of one of Joel’s still-life photos hanging above them. We listen in as they discuss their darkest fears; Maggie is terrified by the thought of Joel dying first, leaving her with no one to hold her on her deathbed. But the reverse equally horrifies her. After her fall – a harrowing glimpse of which is shown, recorded by Joel on his phone – we accompany him as he sneaks into hospital outside visiting hours to mark their anniversary. Husband and wife repeat their wedding vows in the darkness, punctuated by kisses. One of the rawest scenes in the documentary depicts Maggie’s eventual return home, hoisted on to the bed from a stretcher. Joel is delighted to have her back but she sobs in excruciating pain, and is understandably snappy while giving him instructions for a sponge bath.

Joel Meyerowitz and Maggie Barrett in a still from Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other (2024). © Jacob Perlmutter and Manon Ouimet/Final Cut for Real

The film repeatedly returns to the imbalances in their relationship, the very different hands they’ve been dealt. Early on, there’s a sequence in which they summarise their lives until now, voice-overs accompanied by old photos. The point is clearly made: Joel had his first solo show at MoMA in 1968 and got his first Guggenheim fellowship two years later. Maggie had her first stint in the ‘nuthouse’ around then. In the traumatic decades that followed she dealt with grief, addiction and abuse and had to stop painting after a car accident nearly left her paralysed. She wrote multiple novels, all rejected, before retraining as a therapist. Meanwhile Joel’s career kept going from strength to strength. In the course of filming, he is shown preparing for a retrospective at Tate Modern. While he pores over his archive and passes long days printing in the studio, Maggie decides to rip out the pages from all her journals and burn them. ‘I think I fooled myself into thinking that there was some value in them when I became a well-known writer,’ she says. As she sits on the floor scattered with paper, Joel crouches over her and takes photos.

Most of the time Maggie doesn’t blame Joel, who dotes on her, but in an unforgettable scene near the end of the film she finally explodes: ‘It’s like all the resentment that’s been building up in me all these years – it’s like, it’s out now, have a good look. Because it’s not pretty and I don’t give a fucking shit.’ Later, after they’ve made up, she reads him a poem in which she allegorises photography as a mistress tempting him away for ‘fleeting moments’ while she holds firm ‘to love’. Luckily he praises the poem as beautiful. This is a couple who are committed to figuring things out. The last shot of the film shows them on the cliffs of Cornwall, kissing and dancing to Arthur Lee’s ‘Everybody’s Gotta Live’. Finally, they are fulfilling the promise Joel made Maggie when she was injured: that they would dance together again. Then, like a pair of giddy teenagers, they run off camera. It’s the closest to a fairy-tale ending you could get in real life – although Joel does have to run back to retrieve his Leica.

Joel Meyerowitz and Maggie Barrett in a still from Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other (2024). © Jacob Perlmutter and Manon Ouimet/Final Cut for Real

Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other is in UK cinemas now.