Benjamin is raised by a nurse (Henson), who turns out to be the kindest of mothers. Growing up among old people, he never considers himself different, though in his mind he is a child, his curiosity only constrained by his limitations. (This is a diversion from the book, where he is an old man in an old man’s body). Benjamin cannot walk for one, his bones withered away by arthritis, but keeps looking at the children playing on the street. Doctors don’t give him much time, but contrary to everybody’s expectations, including his own, he lives on.

In a nice touch, nobody really realises for a long time that he’s actually growing younger. It’s a long process and many years before anybody sees him as a young man.

While Benjamin is still shrivelled and wrinkled, he meets a young girl (about seven) called Daisy (Blanchett). For him, it’s instant love, but nobody sees it that way. Even inmates who know he is actually a child frown upon him meeting the young girl secretly at night.

Years pass, she grows older, he younger, when finally they are about the same age. But again, there is a hitch: she is a ballerina, the picture of youthful beauty and suppleness; he an awkward middle-aged man just discovering what it means to be young. It’s only after an injury makes her older, wiser and similarly physically bruised that the love between them takes shape. Now the positions are reversed, it’s her turn to watch the mirror for changes, new lines marking the passing of years.

... contd.