The Pastor's Wife (2011)

Admirable film.

A Masterpiece!

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

I was a member of a Baptists church for over 2 years. The Pastor's Wife portrays a fairly accurate account of the women in my church who firmly believe that the men in the family have the final say. The wedding vows too are fairly accurate in as much as the 'love, honour and obey' that were originally 'standard' vows. The pastor (or minister) in my church, although young was not (to my knowledge) violent, nor abusive. However he had little or no knowledge of domestic abuse as he had been raised in a non-violent atmosphere. His views were outdated though, because he constantly informed me that no matter how I was treated (or ill-treated), my role as wife was to be submissive, understanding and non-judgemental. My ex treated me okay (in public) behind closed doors, I too was subjected to verbal abuse both by him and his parents. The minister in my church did inform me that if I chose to 'abandon' the marriage, I too would be ostracized by the church. I chose to leave and (as promised) was ostracized.

This film excels at conjuring the ambiguity in a troubling case.As the movie tells it, Mary Winkler shot her husband in the back after he would not help her out of a financial mess that he gotten her into. Mary had had about enough of a man who'd beaten and abused her sexually, but, as Selmer, Tenn.'s upstanding pastor, was expert at hiding all that.Rose McGowan, though far more glamorous than the real-life mother of three at the heart of the story, does well as a timid woman who doesn't even believe she deserves a defense. Michael Shanks has a small role as her husband but is believable.Since Mary was the sole witness to so much of what she claims to have endured, we, her lawyer, her jury, and her community must base our judgments on her version alone. As the film tells it, Mary's oldest daughter, about 12 at the time of the killing, remains a voice of skepticism. The scene in which she challenges her mother as to why they were not calling the police is powerful and really gets one thinking.The movie's final scene is a little chilling. Has Mary changed since serving a short term in jail and returning to everyday life in her quiet town? Or was she always that way? In all, this was very well done.

As a member of the Church of Christ I have to disagree with the other reviewer. There is no conditioning in the church for wives to be underlings and take abuse. That is hogwash. My mother is a preacher's wife and she is very strong and outspoken. I also hated the scene of their wedding. Those vows they said I have never in my life heard at a wedding. That too was Hollywood hogwash. I also noticed some of the background music made me think of Deliverance. That's what Hollywood thinks of Southerners! All our women barefoot and pregnant and the men chewing tobacco holding a shotgun. Please!!! I didn't really keep up with this trial, but I wonder how much conjecture and untruths were added to this film. But, nobody but Mary knows the truth about what happened and evidently,the jury bought her story.

I'm still not sure what to think of this one. It's trying really hard to be more than just another Lifetime movie about either a crazy woman who knocked off her husband or a male S.O.B. who got what he deserved when his wife shot him. The film has a lot of good aspects, notably the way it establishes how the authoritarian beliefs of the Church of Christ conditioned the events -- how the husband could literally believe his wife should submit to him and meekly accept him even when he hit her for trivial reasons, and also why his dark side would reveal itself in surfing for porn on the Net and ultimately in making his wife dress like a hooker before he could have sex with her (all those religious hang-ups about sex being only to make babies, not to have fun!). I also liked little bits like the woman prosecutor saying, when she receives notice that the wife and her attorney are going to present spousal abuse as a defense, "I wonder what took them so long." (Since the movie is already more than half over before this happens, I wonder what took screenwriter Robert Freedman and director Norma Bailey that long, too!) At the same time, there are just too many lapses into familiar Lifetime clichés for this to work as the atmospheric neo-noir it was clearly meant to be, and Rose McGowan simply looks too young to have been married for 13 years and have three children, the oldest a teenager. (Then again they may have wanted a young-looking actress because Freedman's script contains a lot of flashbacks to when Matthew and Mary Winkler were dating and Mary was still just a teenager herself.) The story deserved a better movie, but this one isn't bad, and Michael Shanks is marvelously understated as Matthew even though Lifetime did the abused-wife schtick much better in "Black and Blue" (in which the authority figure the wife didn't dare report as a spousal abuse was a cop instead of a minister).