In one instance, pathos verges on the absurd as the man, carrying the boy on his back, hobbles after the thief (Michael Kenneth Williams) who's stumbling away with the precious shopping cart and all their belongings. This leads to one of the film's most wrenching sequences, more powerful on screen than on the page, a kind of reverse Good Samaritan parable. "We are carrying the fire," the man keeps telling his son, though he doesn't always see its light. And it is in scenes like this one that the fire burns brightest.
