Days after his wife's death, an aging jazz pianist stumbles on a discovery that unravels everything he believed about their sixty-five years together, and spends the rest of the film reckoning with it.
What is Max Rose about?
Max Rose has spent a lifetime believing his marriage was a quiet, settled kind of happiness. A small object found among his late wife's belongings throws that certainty into doubt, and he can no longer simply grieve without also questioning what he thought he knew. Rather than let the matter drop, he pushes into his own past, tracking down people connected to a version of events he never suspected existed. Along the way he leans on his granddaughter and reconnects with old friends and rivals, each conversation forcing him to weigh decades of memory against a single piece of evidence that refuses to fit.
About the cast
Jerry Lewis anchors the film in the title role, playing the part with a restraint that departs sharply from the broad comic persona most audiences associate with him. Kerry Bishé plays his granddaughter and becomes his closest confidante as the search unfolds, while Kevin Pollak, Claire Bloom, Dean Stockwell, Illeana Douglas, Fred Willard, and Mort Sahl fill out a supporting cast of old friends, family, and figures from Max's past who each carry a piece of the larger picture.
Context & significance
Director Daniel Noah built the film as a small, character-driven drama rather than a plot-heavy mystery, letting long conversations and quiet rooms carry most of the weight. Released in 2016 and running a lean 83 minutes, it functions as much as a showcase for its veteran cast as a story about grief, memory, and how much of a long marriage a person can ever really know.
Watching Max Rose on Ktime
Max Rose is available to stream on K-Time in its original English, without Persian dubbing or subtitles on this title. The page can be read by anyone without an account, and watching the film only requires logging into a free K-Time account, part of the platform's broader library of character-driven English-language drama for Persian-speaking audiences worldwide.