Also under Max’s roof: his wife Eleanor (Sinйad Cusack), a classics professor battling cancer, and their daughter Esme (Alice Eve), a hippie with a thing for her dad’s t o u s l e - h a i r e d s t a r p u p i l . The two men reconnect only twice more over the next 22 years. When “Rock ‘n’ Roll” resumes in the late 1980s, Eleanor has died, the grown-up Esme (Ms. Cusack again) has a teenage daughter of her own (Ms.

Eve), and while a semi-infirm Max still appears to win every argument he has about the Party, history threatens to consign his lifelong ideals to the scrap heap.