I love well-researched overview articles. The Independent has a great one about the issues surrounding Mel Gibson’s new film, The Passion. Basically, it’s likely to be: hard to watch, because it’s gruesome and in Aramaic; hard to believe, because it’s presented as “what really happened” but has major factual errors; and hard to swallow, because it will be seen as blaming Jews for the death of Christ.

It’s not the kind of film I’d watch, because the subject matter doesn’t interest me. More interesting to me are Gibson’s reasons for making the film and the general reaction to it. I actually like his idea of offering the film in Latin and Aramaic (with no subtitles, apparently). It will be interesting to see what kind of audience it can muster, since most Americans won’t even watch a foreign-language film with subtitles.