How Eric's mates rally round to help him beat adversity is pure fairy-tale wish fulfilment, but it's also the film's most Loachian point: strength in numbers against oppression, essentially a rallying call for the power of unionisation.
And then, of course, there were the irruptions of pure fantasy, the fairy-dust sprinklings that gave his performance its aura of other-worldliness.
Between pure dance and plotless fairy tale, Shaker is occasionally uneven but never loses its charm.
That both these pure expressions of the fairy spirit came so recently, and out of an urban capital of empire under extreme stress, is, this Christmas, at once a scary and a hopeful thought.
It is a nocturne evoked by slowly sliding, gauzy chords and the eerily pure scales of a fairy-chorus of boy sopranos.
I went to Oklahoma City just to see what was going on: if the fairy tale was pure chance, or if Sam Presti and company were actually geniuses and Kevin Durant was actually a saint, etc.
The result is a marvel — at once pure skazka, an old-style Russian fairy tale, and a deeply researched history populated with characters, episodes, even dialogue, snatched from history.
But the wild fairy-tale atmosphere is pure Martin vintage.
Or maybe Adams' thinks men were evolved from animals and women were evolved from fairies and lollipops, so pure as the driven snow we'd never long to hire an escort or fraternize with the youthful intern?
