The long history of ancient Macedon, since 1991 the Republic of Macedonia, is so unwieldy, ethnic conflict-driven and, except for Alexander the Great, generally unknown, that it can be symbolized by European Union refusal to recognize the nation’s sovereignty due to protests that the very name belongs to Greece. A similar, and needless, complexity mars the structuring of Ivo Trajkov’s fifth feature, The Great Water/Golemata voda, courageously filmed on the edge of 2002 civil war in Skopje and Bitola.

Co-scripted by the director from Zivko Cingo’s novel of the early ‘70s, the story details the first, Stalinist years after World War II, during which later renegade Marshall Tito’s NLF federal Yugoslav government toed the hard line from Moscow. Aside from Socialist economic plans, state policy included the rooting out of Orthodoxy, punishment of “enemies of the revolution” dissenters, and harsh military-style brainwashing of children with the aim of transforming them into Pioneers. Singled out for the latter, in asylums that were in effect ideological labor camps, were the offspring of those deemed such internal “enemies.”

Its adults veteran actors, the film relies for its visceral impact on over two-hundred-fifty children, eight to fifteen, as parentless war casualties interned in a fortress-turned-factory-turned-orphanage fronting an immense lake glimpsed only in opening credits and an ironic ending. Within “walls one thousand steps high, two thousand steps wide,” the terrified speechless youngsters are abused, browbeaten and indoctrinated by various fanatics, sadists and out-and-out lunatics.

Unvarnished, such a (true) tale packs an emotional wallop. Unfortunately, the way in which it is done, plus a coating of East European folk myth-supernatural, fuzzes the issue, raises unanswered questions, and rather confuses an audience so that, for example, more than one viewer saw rape in what was actually humorous consensual sex involving a one-eyed, one-armed Soviet Hero who forgets that orphans have no parents and screams “Charge!” at the moment of climax.

Distinguished, bearded politician Lem Nikodinoski (Meto Jovanovski) is rushed to the hospital with heart failure, and what follows is his life flashbacking in front of his unconscious eyes. In bluish tint, the elderly man frequently appears to voice (by Rade Serbedzija) accented comment and observe, unseen, his twelve-year-old self (Saso Kekenovski) in that sepia past and even physically passes the bejeweled silver grandmother’s Slavic cross that he will too conveniently re-find in a wood box in the overgrown abandoned institution yard.

Breathless and hunted by soldiers, young Lem is “caught [like] the rabbit” and brought to the asylum run by stern Headmaster Comrade “Daddy” Ariton (Mitko Apostolovski) and Deputy Comrade Olivera (Verica Nedeska), a sultry enthusiast who worships the Stalin whose bust she is molding.

Medieval in construction and method, this self-contained school relies on punishment, boot-camp exercise and rote memorization. Religion is anathema, and what is “holy” is a pair of red shorts awarded by the Gymnastics Committee. In a disappointingly flat episode, the sports relic disappears and is recovered, although the non-Communist supernatural, or at least unexplained, crops up in Ariton’s rainstorm cigarettes, his wife’s (Nikolina Kujaca) invisible nocturnal wanderings, and the arrival of Isak Keyten (Maja Stankovska), a year Lem’s senior, angelic with a hint of the diabolic, awe-inspiring and unafraid. The new internee works miracles -- or Old Nick’s work -- with blood, candles and wire crosses, and Lem will extend himself to win the friendship of this boy who “they say is from the Devil, demon seed,” and whose surname means “Devil” in Turkish. Young beauty Lenche (Marina Cakalova) falls under his spell, too, but her end is wasted off-the-precincts, off-screen, and it will be Olivera’s sexual advances to him that precipitate the crisis.

The character of Isak is ambiguous in motivation and destiny, but Lem will live with his own act for what seems the “thousand years passed since then.” In his last two acts, with the boy Lem and with his wife, only the Headmaster  unexpectedly comes off as nobly tragic. The rest -- the plight of children, excesses of dehumanizing fanaticism, line between Heaven and Hell, spirit and flesh, and loyalty to truth -- is confused by the mix of techniques and genres. Perhaps brief final scenes, with a television news crew on the lakeside and cleaning staff at the ICU, are meant to imply that all is mere vanity, anyway.

(Released by Picture This! Entertainment; not rated by MPAA.)