Biodocs oscillate between two registers:

Archival / talking-head overviews on their subject’s past, and new slice-of-life footage of what their present-day reality looks like.

Even though Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other dabbles in both, this new documentary also adopts a novel approach. Joel Meyerowitz is technically its celebrity figure, but his less/not-famous wife ends up in the center of the frame, particularly how she handles the disparity between their career success; the project utilizes Meyerowitz’s clout to counter the imbalance in their public notoriety.

Ultimately, Two Strangers becomes a cinéma-vérité portrait on the current state of their marriage, depicting the private side of their daily existence. The truthiness of its everyday depiction of a late-life relationship got me thinking:

We’re overdue for Ring Camera Cinema, be it a documentary, or fiction in the vein of The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, Unfriended, Searching, Grand Theft Hamlet, etc. — all of which turn over their big screens to the dominant form of the moving image from their respective eras.

And the 2020s open up the possibility of an entire movie told through Ring shots.