The title, Iron Island/Jazireh Ahani, is strong and attention-grabbing. So, too, is the situation, a community of families and assorted waifs setting up a viable society aboard an abandoned imperceptibly sinking oil tanker in the Irani upper Persian Gulf. Even forgetting broad recurrent insistence on the whole as “pilgrimage” of some kind or other, director-writer-coproducer Mohammad Rasoulof’s second feature begs for interpretation, for assigning a (preferably allegorical) meaning, but though such a goal tantalizes always just ahead around the bend, it never quite gels.

It may be that Western sensibilities are at fault here, accustomed to concrete classifications and, particularly from the Middle East, expecting rationale or mea culpa, or at the very least a stripped-down Waterworld struggling to legendary Dryland. Maybe, but the feeling is that, cultural differences aside and making allowances for budget restrictions and subtitle inadequacies, the result is merely a failure to bring off what starts out with promise.

While handouts point out that, through its Culture Ministry, Tehran would foster an image of tolerance toward minorities, and further specify that only one-twenty-fifth of the population is Arab -- sixteen times as numerous, Persians are Aryan and, true to type, often disdainful of Semites -- the film strikes one as, at least in intent, above such divisive concerns. Nor does it cater to the tensions between majority Shiite Muslims and Sunnis, the latter including the coast-dwelling Bandaris of the story.

From one of three-dozen filmmakers -- plus ten classic independent domestic documentaries -- in the current Film Society of Lincoln Center/Museum of Modern Art’s collaborative New Directors/New Films, Iron Island comes equally out of masterpieces of Iran’s medieval literature, but such arcane knowledge is also window dressing for an approach for the work. Rather, the storyline is at heart so stark, and so angled, that it invites symbolic interpretation, a view not of a specific state but of the state of humankind.

Dispossessed by unspecified processes, a community is re-forming itself on board a derelict hulk stagnant in a green-blue sea itself stifling, flat and un-human. Against the sickly slick water and grey-whitish sky, the womenfolk reverse the animal kingdom’s color scheme in beautiful robes and burqa-masks (fashion, not religion) and porthole curtains. Their drab mates either are gone for long periods working elsewhere or are welding, sawing, drilling and hammering apart the ship’s dark innards for scrap metal, the human body/body politic consuming itself.

Absolute leader of this makeshift society is Captain Nemat (Ali Nasirian). He’s the philosopher king, coordinator, school board head, business rep, judge, jury and executioner here. Conservative or practical, he warns semi-adopted Ahmad (Hossein Farzi-Zadeh) to stay away from a Girl (Neda Pakdaman) whose marriage-for-money he has brokered, and he will unhesitatingly punish any violation of his decrees. There are others -- spastic wheelchaired Meraj in charge of the lift, and Akbar of the scavenger workers; the humanistic Teacher, sun-watching old Uncle Sadegh and boy-child Baby Fish -- but the Captain orchestrates all and must find and purchase some patch of terra firma for his “children” before non-Arab Mr. Hachemania motors out to take possession in the name of the tanker’s new owners.

Settling newcomers on the ship or the whole flock in its barren town-to-be, dispensing medicine, snake oil, advice and funeral services, Nemat fills not only the captain of fate/master of ship-soul function, but also evokes questions of the nature of leadership. Machiavellian self-interest or disinterested guardianship, juggler of unwritten bank accounts or public servant, egomaniac or closet dictator or guide of other men by “turning one’s back on men,” he orders trapped oil pumped up from the hold to be dangerously steered to shore -- a brief, overpraised scene -- in yellow barrels by swimming boys.

Some might find Iron Island beautiful and, if ominous, prophetic in the same breath. But these ill-lit surfaces of moments, pregnant scenes that lead to nowhere beyond themselves, and the cacophony of hammerings and ungreased winches, of one-sided cellphone and bullhorn talks and unsoft voices, irretrievably scatter any sense of direction, straight or ironic, concrete or symbolic, political or social. 

(Released by Kino International; not rated by MPAA.)