Rotten Tomatoes

Movies / TV

    Celebrity

      No Results Found

       View All       Movies Tv shows Shop News Showtimes

      The Great Water

      Released Apr 30, 2004 1h 34m Drama List
      71% 21 Reviews Tomatometer 75% 500+ Ratings Audience Score On his deathbed, Lem (Meto Jovanovski) thinks back to his childhood in a post-World War II Stalinist "reeducation" camp, where the children of parents unwilling to embrace the new realities of Yugoslavia are taught the ways of the communist future. The young Lem (Saso Kekenovski) befriends a boy named Isak (Maja Stankovska), and they survive under the stern but compassionate tutelage of headmaster Ariton (Mitko Apostolovski) and the more brutal ways of his assistant, Olivera (Verica Nedeska). Read More Read Less

      Audience Reviews

      View All (13) audience reviews
      Audience Member Interesting premise that mixed together Stalinism with all its brutality, Christianity that despite its oppression eventually prevails in additional of some strange character, looking like an angel, in the midst of the cruel reality of "reeducation" camp for children of the 'people's enemies.' Still, the movie is pretty confusing and even though I tried very hard to like it, I could not because of that. Rated 2 out of 5 stars 02/27/23 Full Review Audience Member Beautiful. Beautiful. Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/26/23 Full Review Audience Member This is a film that is guaranteed to absolutely mystify 99.9% of viewers of a non-Eastern European (communist) back-ground. I could be mistaken in my own understanding of this film, but having read much literature by Solzhenitsyn in recent years, I saw in this film a magnificent allegory of the spiritual condition of communist eastern Europe generally. Every scene in a supposed "orphanage" signifying the dramatic "re-education" of the masses ensuring the absolutes of communist ideology were sacrosanct to the state. The perverse morphing of the Cult of Stalin (Tito) with the mythology of the Great Patriotic War (WW2 for the rest of us), symbolized by a disgusting sex scene between a disfigured Red Army (or Partisan) veteran and a teenage girl of the "Stalin (Tito) Youth", was very off-putting, but it was not to be taken at face value- it was a symbolic union. The mysterious presence of a beautiful woman with a bible and the "voyeurism" of the two young boys of the orphanage that challenge the communist orthodoxies taught in the orphanage with their orthodox spirituality appears to symbolize the undercurrent of the free thinking minority that sought to reclaim their nation's hitherto cut off spiritual heritage. A very pregnant film this was indeed. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/21/23 Full Review Audience Member good and interesting. there's a war between religion and communism. Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/16/23 Full Review Audience Member very interesting and poignant film - an insight into communist yugoslavia, filmed entirely on location in macedonia, and two extraordinary young characters. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/23/23 Full Review Audience Member really great watch. i love seeing the world from the perspectve of teenagers, esp when told by them when they are adults. everything is washed through their memories, no one knoes what is true, what isn't... it's hard not to get involved in the story and get mesmerized.... Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/06/23 Full Review Read all reviews Post a rating

      Cast & Crew

      Show Less Cast & Crew Show More Cast & Crew

      More Like This

      View All Best Movies to Stream at Home
      82% 78% Mirage 98% 86% Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams 25% 39% The Whore's Son 70% 89% The Edukators 68% 65% Father and Son Discover more movies and TV shows. View More

      Photos

      View All The Great Water photos

      The Great Water

      View more photos

      Critics Reviews

      View All (21) Critics Reviews
      Robert Koehler Variety Pic's balance of emotional truth in the hands of a talented cast and charged by Medencevic's lensing and Kiril Dzajkovski's powerfully moody score, reps a bold step forward for Balkan cinema. Sep 9, 2005 Full Review Terry Lawson Detroit Free Press It is an impressionistic, sometimes fascinating, sometimes frustrating, window into a culture and country that was long walled off from the West. Rated: 3/4 Sep 9, 2005 Full Review Lisa Schwarzbaum Entertainment Weekly All of it, Chingo and Trajkov suggest, goes into shaping a Macedonian national identity uneasily poised between religious longing and ideological resolve. Rated: B Jul 13, 2005 Full Review Mark R. Leeper rec.arts.movies.reviews Rated: low +3 out of -4..+4 Jul 27, 2007 Full Review Matthew Smith Film Journal International Macedonian blockbuster is more successful as a technical accomplishment than as an engaging narrative. Oct 27, 2005 Full Review Laura Kelly South Florida Sun-Sentinel The cinematic version should have focused on the strength of the orphans' tales, without wasting time with story framing. Rated: 2/4 Sep 8, 2005 Full Review Read all reviews

      Movie Info

      Synopsis On his deathbed, Lem (Meto Jovanovski) thinks back to his childhood in a post-World War II Stalinist "reeducation" camp, where the children of parents unwilling to embrace the new realities of Yugoslavia are taught the ways of the communist future. The young Lem (Saso Kekenovski) befriends a boy named Isak (Maja Stankovska), and they survive under the stern but compassionate tutelage of headmaster Ariton (Mitko Apostolovski) and the more brutal ways of his assistant, Olivera (Verica Nedeska).
      Director
      Ivo Trajkov
      Screenwriter
      Vladimir Blazevski, Ivo Trajkov
      Genre
      Drama
      Original Language
      Macedonian
      Release Date (Theaters)
      Apr 30, 2004, Original
      Rerelease Date (Theaters)
      Nov 12, 2004
      Box Office (Gross USA)
      $87.4K
      Runtime
      1h 34m