Through the eyes of artists and longtime partners Maggie Barrett and Joel Meyerowitz, Manon Ouimet and Jacob Perlmutter’s debut documentary, Two Strangers Trying Not To Kill Each Other, invites us to question everything we think we know about romantic love and our inevitable mortality.
Intimate, raw and real. Two Strangers Trying Not To Kill Each Other is a refreshing, no holds barred exploration of human connection and resilience, and a stunningly open insight into an older couple’s confrontation with the past and present. With unwavering candour, a then 74-year-old Maggie Barrett and her 85-year-old partner, Joel Meyerowitz, welcome us into their home, exposing the highs and lows of their relationship.
Barrett, an artist and writer, was born in 1940s England and was adopted as a child. She is a classically trained pianist, has lived all over the world, and has published numerous novels and plays, “a lot of my writing deals with themes of loss and belonging”. She has been clean and sober for 37 years. Joel is husband number five. Meyerowitz was born just before World War II, in the Bronx, New York, to Hungarian and Russian immigrants. He started out as a painter before joining an advertising agency. Following a “transformative moment” working with photographer Robert Frank, Meyerowitz quit his job, borrowed a camera and took to the streets. He jests, “I’ve been out on the streets basically out of work for the last 64 years…it has taught me everything I know”. Maggie is wife number two.
“A touching portrayal of love, creativity and partnership amidst the passage of time”
- The Upcoming
Maggie and Joel’s love story is nothing short of destiny, a real-life fairytale. They met in the 1990s when Meyerowitz spotted Barrett from his bike on Cape Cod. From their very first meeting, Meyerowitz had a “deep sense that we were meant for each other”; the title of the film stems from their initial exchange, in which he remarked that they were “two strangers trying not to kill each other”. “I have no idea where it came from” he recalls, “but something deep inside, trusting and urgent, flew out of me”.
The debut documentary from Manon Ouimet and Jacob Perlmutter is a tremendous foray into the genre. Despite having no previous experience in film, Ouimet’s formal education in photography and exploration of identity “using photography as a therapeutic tool to look at the body and study self-identity” proved essential to the film’s development. Perlmutter’s background as a multi-disciplinary creative in photography, music and film, and love for street photography was a cornerstone in the project’s inception. Inspired by the “golden era” of street photography between the 1950s and 1980s – including Meyerowitz’s works – Perlmutter travelled the world exhibiting his own photography. During this time, he learnt how to photograph people and situations spontaneously, which he believes lent itself to “the spontaneity of documentary making” and the practice of “making a frame where you anticipate that it has meaning without fully knowing.”
People say you should never meet your heroes, but a chance encounter between Perlmutter and Meyerowitz proves otherwise, “I saw Joel on the streets of London and being a big fan, I was taken aback. There's something indescribable about seeing a street photographer in the wild”. Perlmutter followed Meyerowitz “trying to summon the courage” to approach him. Just as he thought he was getting close, he lost him. In a quirk of fate, Perlmutter spotted Joel again a few weeks later, this time with Maggie, and approached him. When Joel introduced him to Maggie, Perlmutter was overcome by an “incredible energy and aura”. Seeing the “respect, the love, the elegance of this older couple spoke to something deep within him”. Fast forward to the COVID-19 pandemic, Perlmutter stumbled across Barrett’s personal blog and wrote to her. “I can't get you out of my mind”, he confessed, “how would you feel about me making a documentary about your relationship?”.
“An intimate portrait that all couples should see...extraordinary”
- The Observer
Partners in life and art, Ouimet and Perlmutter viewed this collaboration as “an opportunity to explore what it is to be a creative, collaborative couple who are still madly in love in their later years”. The couples met on Zoom and “fell in love with each other”, says Barrett, “it was a yes right from the beginning, even though we didn't know them”. “We had this feeling that we were paired in some way with a 40-year gap between us” Meyerowitz recalls, “like their questions as young artists had already been lived through by us. That kind comfort, our trust in each other, I think, is the underlying strength of the film”. Ouimet notes the “interesting symmetry” of their situations and says of their initial interaction, “we were like lifelong friends that hadn't seen each other for a while. There was, this sense of immediate love, tenderness, trust and playfulness between us”. Barrett saw the film as “an opportunity to put a bit of hope out into the world”, having met Meyerowitz late in life and “having both tried love before and failing”. Two months later, Barrett and Meyerowitz invited the filmmakers to move into their home in Tuscany. Ouimet and Perlmutter accepted.
During this time, Ouimet and Perlmutter filmed over the course of a year. Two small Leica cameras and a few tripods captured over 200 hours of footage, which they then condensed into 100 minutes in the final cut. “The really exciting moments are when you’re standing next to the camera and something happens that is so beyond what you could have ever imagined”, Perlmutter beams, “it blew our minds”. The project, inspired by fiction filmmakers and documentarians, was “very purist in its observational way. We just set up cameras and let it roll. Sometimes we'd be in the space with them and the cameras, other times we wouldn't”, explains Ouimet. Collaborating with “seasoned pros” at Final Cut for Real, Louverture, Fremantle and Modern Films was a highlight for Perlmutter. The beautiful thing about documentaries, according to Ouimet, is that they can be both “a mirror reflecting back your lived experience” or “a window in, and that's a rare opportunity in life to have those things work in tandem. We’re grateful that we were able to make one.”
“Unprecedented intimacy and candour”
- Sight and Sound
The shoot was not without its challenges, but the couples’ optimistic approach to the process swiftly weathered any storms. “Challenges are your friends. If you wait long enough, they become a harmonious gift” Perlmutter reassures, “the payoff of patience is in great things happening that you never expected”. On an emotional level “there was a level of leaving our lives behind and being totally present in theirs”, reflects Ouimet, “at the same time we learned so much from observing a relationship in such great detail – it was challenging but totally amazing”. The challenge for Barrett was the unpredictability of the year: her accident and recovery, leaving Tuscany, and moving to London. Even still, Barrett found the process more validating than anything, “one of the gifts of being with Jacob and Manon was being recognised as an equal creatively”.
From the outset, it was fundamental that the filmmaking language, the cinematography and the score should be informed by both Barrett and Meyerowitz. “It became very important to us that we represented two artists in a visual and sonic way that made sense to them and represented them”, suggests Ouimet. The film’s composer, Diogo Strausz, sampled Barrett’s piano compositions to create the score, invoking subtle changes in mood with every note. In one scene, Barrett plays the piano whilst observing a photograph depicting white waves crashing against a sharp rockface in Cloggy, Cornwall. This, Barrett says, is “my heart place, my soul place”. Barrett’s heartfelt compositions are rarely planned, “when I sit down to play, I have no idea what's going to come out. It's very much informed by my emotional state.”
“A thoughtful, revealing and sometimes profoundly uncomfortable viewing experience”
- Screen Daily
As lifelong artists, Meyerowitz and Barrett understood the power of perseverance, “the most important thing as a creative person is that you do the work and keep doing it. It doesn't matter how many rejections you get; you enjoy the process”. Meyerowitz’s challenge was a “physical and emotional one”. When Barrett broke her femur during filming, Meyerowitz became her full-time carer. “I felt so much compassion for Maggie. There was a certain joy in knowing that I was caring for the woman I love. And to have that energy and desire at 85, I can't tell you how nourishing that was”. “He had to do everything” Barrett confirms. Not an ounce of bitterness escapes their lips, “I just felt grateful” Meyerowitz gushes.
The film refuses to shy away from emotional hard truths, Barrett especially confronts this theme head-on, “everybody wants to love and be loved. That's universal. But let's not idealise it. Let's see what love is really, because it's not always easy”. Feelings of personal rejection, the imbalance of success between the partners and how this has manifested over the course of their relationship is both prevalent and poignant. Meyerowitz agrees that inequality in their professional trajectories is “a core issue in the film” but clarifies that it's not something the couple use “in a combative way”. The film “presents this inequality as an important characteristic of relationships in general. And the ways in which they're imbalanced”, he adds. “When I saw how I was carrying the resentment, I had a decision to make. Do I want to live that way, or do I want to let go of it and enjoy all that I do have, which is a lot”, confesses Barrett. The turbulent scene in question in which Barrett confronts Meyerowitz, ostensibly about him ignoring her request for him to move rooms whilst he telephones his doctor, is palpably arresting. The tenderness displayed in previous scenes – dancing in the living room, caressing each other in the bath, playing table tennis in the garden – vanishes. Nevertheless, as the scene unfolds, the deeply ingrained sense of care and respect they have for each other reveals itself once more. “My own ineptitude in that emotional scene is a lesson for the culture of masculinity that’s embedded within us” reflects Meyerowitz, “even though I'm a loving, supportive husband, I can still make the mistake of being unaware of the sensitivity of somebody else because I'm caught up in my own life”.
“A beautiful delve into life, love and the ups-and-downs of a long relationship”
- Business Doc Europe
The public’s reaction to this visceral scene and to the film itself has been “overwhelmingly fantastic” in Barrett’s eyes, who wondered “how the confrontational scene was going to be taken out in the world, especially by men. I cannot tell you how many men have come up to me after the screening in tears”. Ouimet is struck by the memory of the film’s premiere last year at CPH:DOX: “You make something with the hope that it will move people, but you don't know if it will”. The film has been “met with so much love” she continues, “meeting people after the screenings and hearing what this film means to them and why they needed it now has been such a gift and totally unexpected”. “Watching the film with a collective of people is remarkable. The dynamic of reactions is really a beautiful thing”, Perlmutter concurs.
Though the couples may have started out as two strangers, now “they’re family” says Ouimet, “still sharing our lives emotionally and creatively”. A sentiment shared by Maggie, Joel, Manon and Jacob.
Two Strangers Trying Not To Kill Each Other is out now in cinemas across the UK. Click here for the full list of venues.
