Photographer Meyerowitz, 87, and artist and writer Barrett, 78, invited two documentary-makers into their lives for a year. The result, Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other, is an intimate portrait that all couples should see

We might all have domestic arguments that demand to be preserved on film for their drama, but few of them would ever live up to the intensity, eloquence and glamour of the barneys between American photographer Joel Meyerowitz and his English wife, novelist and artist Maggie Barrett.

The best (or worst) of those clashes comes toward the end of the extraordinary, intimate documentary of Joel and Maggie’s marriage, aptly entitled Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other (their own private update on “till death us do part”). In that final set-to, Maggie conjures all the frustrations of the 30 years they have been together – years in which Joel has become ever more world-famous and celebrated as a photographer,...