If all directors have a God complex, then no filmmaker took the job description more literally than Stanley Kubrick. Far from a sweet, gentle deity with a kindly white beard, Kubrick staunchly refused to interfere in the affairs of mortals in his filmic universe, which led to persistent charges that he hated his characters and, by extension, humanity itself. And yet the film that critics regularly point to as Kubrick’s nadir — the one that might seem the most distant and uninvolving — actually best exemplifies his very complicated relationship with his fellow humans. Adapted from William Makepeace Thackeray’s... More >>>