‘Documentary Now!’ Review: The Comfort We’ve Been Waiting For
The Comfort We’ve Been Waiting For
[This review is part of a series about the American Documentary Film Festival at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Read all of them here.]
On the first full weekend of the 2014 American Documentary Awards, I finally got to attend the opening night of this year’s competition—the American Documentary Film Festival.
I was not disappointed.
This was my first time seeing the show, and I can tell you first-handed, that it was a big deal. The show (and its trailer) were a perfect fit for the Festival, and I was glad that I’d been granted the opportunity to find out for myself if the show was worthy of my time and money.
It was. The Comfort We’ve Been Waiting For, by documentary filmmakers Jennifer Baumgardner and David L. Uchen, is a wonderful look at the work of three writers—Mark Glaser, Michael Connelly, and Stephen King—who collaborated on The Dark Tower series in the 1990s. Each writer produced their own stories for the series, using their own talent and craft in unique ways throughout the stories that were woven together into a cohesive whole.
The three writers are celebrated by filmmakers Baumgardner and Uchen for the skill that they put into their scripts and how that talent helped make one of the greatest film franchises of all time.
In each of the three stories contained within The Comfort We’ve Been Waiting For, the stories were written from the perspective of a man or a woman who survived a tragic trainwreck. In each of the three stories, the main character’s story takes an unexpected turn, leading to a surprising resolution.
In each of the three stories, it is a woman who is the central figure and the guiding force of the plot, whether it is a mother trying to protect her family from the criminal organization who are abducting her daughter, or a woman whose husband has been killed in a train wreck, that sets in motion the drama, which is then shaped and transformed by her own resilience and perseverance.
The stories are written from the point of view of two strangers aboard
