Ivo Trajkov's adaptation of Zivko Cingo's post-Stalinist novel The Great Water begins in a frenzy, as an old man is rushed to a hospital and he flashes back, in quick bursts of images, to a violent incident from his youth. As the opening credits end, the old man walks toward a crumbling institution which has his picture slapped onto the walls, on posters bearing the slogan "Elect Lem Nikodinoski For A Safe Future." He walks into the building, enters an abandoned dormitory, and remembers the late '40s, when he was a boy, the building was an orphanage, and… Well, has there ever been a happy orphanage?
This particular Macedonian orphanage cranked out happy young communists, and valued the children who informed regularly on their fellow students. Saso Kekenovski plays the younger version of the old politician, who arrives at the group home after World War II and quickly makes friends with an iconoclastic Christian boy (Maja Stankovska). The headmaster boasts that the new world has no place for ancient superstitions—"We eliminated these plus signs," he chuckles, brandishing a cross—so Kekenovski and Stankovska rendezvous late at night for makeshift communion ceremonies, telling themselves that free will is "the most sacred thing that you have." But when the two boys have a falling out over Verica Nedeska, a true Red with a crush on Stankovska, Kekenovski abandons his ideals for wider acceptance.
The Great Water was shot while Macedonia was on the brink of civil war in the summer of 2002, but very little of the contemporary political atmosphere seeps into the film. Trajkov uses an aggressively polished style, with lots of camera moves and color filters, and the burnished look makes The Great Water too much of a movie and not enough of a history. Kekenovski gives a rich leading performance, and Trajkov illustrates the hollowness of Stalinism well, particularly through repeated shots of Nedeska's slow-developing sculpture of the Soviet leader. But the film ends before it can show what long-term impact these events had on the protagonist's life. What was his political career like? Did he ever love again? Had the orphanage years been the first chapter in a longer story, The Great Water might've stretched toward a finish as unforgettable as its start.