Moonlighting (1982) is a small movie. In fact, it’s so small, it’s practically claustrophobic. It’s the story of four men sent from Poland to England to renovate their boss’s rundown pied-a-terre, even though it’s not legal to do it. The film is set contemporaneously in the early 80s, an interesting time period in both countries. Poland was still under the communist thumb, and England was still trying to shed its post-war torpor.

Small movies are hard to find these days. The American studios are only interested in financing Spiderbatwars movies that can gross over a billion. Occasionally someone makes a minor hit on a relative shoestring, like Jon Favreau did with Swingers. Then Hollywood hires them to make Spiderbatwars movies along with the rest of the mafia they’re running out there.

Then again, Hollywood didn’t have anything to do with Moonlighting. It’s a British/Polish production. They still know how to do small. The UK has a long tradition of so-called kitchen sink dramas, going back to things like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, or Look Back in Anger. They honed their inquisition into social class, everyday life, and regional differences to a knife edge, and portrayed it with modest, naturalistic, almost documentary style. In Hollywood parlance, those things add up to: cheap, and hard to monetize, so they’re not interested. The way productions are paid for in the UK make small movies possible. They’re subsidized by various governments, the TV networks themselves, and any number of other not-quite-government entities. The actors don’t get Brad Pitt money, and the stuff gets made.

Jeremy Irons plays Nowak, the foreman of the other three Poles sent to camp out in a London flat while renovating it on the sly. He’s fantastic, like he always is. Irons affects a believable foreign tang in his voice that makes his halting English more believable. In the story, he’s the only Pole who can speak English, so he’s in charge. He’s also the only who can read the newspaper. He discovers that while they were away, martial law was declared in Poland, and tanks are rolling in the streets. The conundrum he faces on whether to tell his mates the truth is the central hinge of the movie.

Unless it’s not. The movie is also a fascinating look at British life at the time, and how foreigners might see it. Fish don’t know about the water they swim in, so a pack of Poles is a great way to get some perspective on Lunnon life.

The Poles are all painfully honest — for a while. They’ve been introduced into a byzantine quest to renovate a flat, and are forced to adapt to the way people behave all around them. After they’re robbed and taken advantage of in various ways, they start doing as the Romans do. Nowak starts by cutting corners, followed by outright stealing when he gets desperate. He learns how to steal by watching how the locals, who have no reason to be desperate, steal and chisel each other.

The movie has enormous appeal as a character study, but it delivers much more if you get interested in it. It is the most realistic portrayal I’ve ever seen of what it’s like to be a workman, banging away on some far flung project to make a couple bucks. You’re not in charge, even of your own affairs, far from home, sleeping on the floor in the rubble every night. You can’t stop or even quit until you finish. It’s a fantastic depiction of, “No matter what happens, keep going.”

Socialist paradises tend to produce a keep going ethic in their populations, frequently at bayonet point. It’s not the desirable version of toughing it out. You plod along, going through the motions, get your ration of gruel, and become ambivalent. It’s hard to tell if everything is illegal, or nothing is, depending on the number on your party card. The Poles work hard, crazy hard, without anything but the tools they can carry and sneak through customs, because they’ve been promised a better deal than they’re getting at home. Maybe.

That’s where Moonlighting delivers another incredibly accurate aspect of the life of a worker at the bottom of the employment totem pole. You’re often working merely on the promise of money, or a promotion, or some other intangible leg up in this world. The work is always worse than described, and the promised emoluments play hide-and-go-seek as often as not.

Irons provides a voiceover throughout the movie. I can count on one hand movies with a continuous voiceover where it improves the movie. This is one of those rare exceptions. Nowak and his minions have jumped from the Kafkaesque frying pan into the Gogolish fire, and the voice in his head makes it plainer for the audience to understand. It’s not exposition, a cheap short cut to depicting their world. It’s an explanation, written by a Pole, who can make Russian writers look cheerful by comparison.

Halfway through, Nowak thinks, “I can speak their language… but I don’t know what they really mean.” One wonders, Nowak, if they do either.