From open to close, crushing misery might be the best way to describe “The Uprising.” Brewing beneath that misery is something more combustible — rage. Only a flicker of hope cuts through.
The misery begins on dew-slicked marshland. Sullen skies blanket the village. It’s England 1381, and the Black Death has wiped out half the population. Pangs of grief still strike the survivors.
One of the village’s many farmers, simply known as the Ploughman (Andrew Garfield), is first seen hand-tilling his modest plot of farmland, which is barely producing any crop. After a day of work, he lies alone in a cot, and instinctively reaches for the empty one beside him, like a phantom itch.
Early on, he mourns at three wooden grave markers. His wife and children were taken by the plague.
“He’s kind of more pain than anything else,” Garfield told reporters during a press conference. “There’s something kind of beautifully transforming in accepting that pain and letting an old self die with that pain, so something new can emerge by the end of our story.”
More suffering is yet to come. The country’s finances are depleted and King Richard II (Woody Norman) and the oligarchs impose another round of taxes on the commoners — a group that has already lost enough.
In a moment when the final thread is snapped, the Ploughman fights back. “Enough,” he erupts, taking the first strike against the taxmen, triggering a rebellion of thousands of frustrated peasants desperate for change.
But the rebellion isn’t only about fighting back. It is also about finding connection after shared loss — making for easily some of the most touching moments of the film, which is rated R for its violence and bloody images.
“What the story in the film speaks to is the kind of the union we can feel with others through our grief,” Garfield told the Deseret News. “One of the few common human experiences that we all can connect through, is we will all lose each other. We will all lose the ones we love. We will all lose connection to ourselves at some point, connection to our gifts, our calling, our families. It’s inevitable. It’s part — it’s as much part of life as breathing.”
“I found that to be very, very moving,” he continued. “A bunch of people who felt ostracized and alienated in their grief and in their woundedness, coming together and wanting to plant new seeds in that very fertile soil.”
The Ploughman reluctantly becomes a leader in the rebellion. His unlikely rise is based on the true events that helped inspire the legend of Robin Hood, as he forms an army of peasants to stand up to the king. The film’s director, Paul Greengrass, told the Deseret News the story still felt especially relevant today.
“It feels very contemporary,” Greengrass said. “It’s a timeless story in our world, but it’s also a timeless story in the movies. We’ve always crafted movie stories about ... heroes facing down injustice and going on a hero’s journey.”
“I think we all need our heroes today,” Greengrass said. “Heroes to me are everyday people. ... What I love about Ploughman is he’s just an ordinary farmer pushed too far, and then he goes on a hero’s journey. And that, I think, speaks to today.”
It is then, as the Ploughman takes on his Robin Hood-esque role, that the rage portion of the film takes over. Misery still abounds, and as the rebellion swells and quickly turns to mass slaughter and reckless destruction, the Ploughman becomes troubled — realizing the movement has come at a devastating cost.
But as the rebellion spirals into chaos, the film’s brief flicker of hope cuts through. For the Ploughman, losing everything spurs his transformation, directing him toward a new kind of freedom.
“The Ploughman is so disempowered within the system that he lives in,” Garfield said. “But there’s some strange upside-down gift in that, where because of that disempowerment, because it destroys him ultimately, that he gets to be reborn by the end of our story into maybe the utmost freedom and power.”
“He gets this kind of initiation, this awakening into a natural wisdom, a kind of a connection to ... what’s left when everything else is gone, when everything else has been taken.”
What parents should know about ‘The Uprising’
The Uprising is rated R for violence and bloody images. Gruesome violence is frequent and intense throughout “The Uprising.”
A medieval-era story, parents whose teenagers want to see the film should expect an authentic portrayal of a violent, 14th century rebellion, including depictions of stabbing, beating and decapitation.
“The Uprising” has no nudity or sexual content and no scenes with drinking, smoking or drug use. There is almost no profanity.
