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And, unfortunately, it delivers the sentiment in a hokey way. When Charlotte tells Cooper that he and Rollie should use the money from the card's sale to reopen a local restaurant, Cooper delivers this clunky line: "Y'know, we just got tested at the doctor. We came out slow and slower. What the hell makes you think we can pull something like that off? You're dreaming, OK? We're not restaurateurs; we can't even keep track of a piece of cardboard."

Thank goodness, we're spared a concluding sequence showing the gang laughing their way through a madcap evening at the wildly successful restaurant. There are some things I'd rather not have to try to forget.

Talk About It

1. The film introduces us to baseball fans who have a consuming intensity about the game and its artifacts. Does this outlet for love and loyalty substitute for something better? Is it fair to call this idolatry?
2. It's been said that loss of memory means loss of personality. As the history that organized a personality fades, the person loses touch with the sources of love or joy that previously fired his emotional life, and may become stuck in a single condition such as fear or anger. But occasionally those losses do a person good; for example, when the reasons for long-term resentment are forgotten, the person may recover an earlier sweetness. Have you seen someone helped by the loss of memory in old age?
3. Diminished Capacity is about memory, but on a subtler level it's also about being remembered. Rollie says he has almost forgotten his grandfather, but when he looks at the baseball card it is as if the man is standing in front of him. At the conclusion, a line from "Ol' Man River" is cited: "He don't plant 'taters, he don't plant cotton, and them that plants them are soon forgotten." What does it mean to be remembered? What one thing would you hope would be passed on to future generations about you?

The Family Corner

Diminished Capacity has not been rated by the MPAA. There is occasional language, of the milder sort. Also, a couple of fight sequences, but not bloody and somewhat comical.

Photos © Copyright Plum Pictures / IFC Films

© Frederica Mathewes-Green subject to licensing agreement with Christianity Today International. All rights reserved. Click for reprint information.

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