The Uprising reached cinemas on 11 September, offering an epic and bloody treatment of the revolt that shook 14th-century England and placed the British Crown in difficulty. The film was written and directed by Briton Paul Greengrass, revisiting the moment when individual grief became collective anger, driving people treated as worthless numbers to demand dignity and the right to self-determination.
The film links the 1381 revolt to contemporary anger
The film is based on a true story involving communities that endured mass death, severe economic pressure and authoritarian rule, but it is less concerned with explaining every detail of the historical context than with building a link between 14th-century peasants and modern audiences.
Greengrass wagers that feelings of anger and frustration, and the desire for a better world, do not lose their impact across different eras, giving the historical story an echo that extends beyond its time. The film evokes the Middle Ages through a muddy, gloomy world where animal noises mingle with clouds of smoke, and characters appear with unkempt hair and dirty clothes amid an unmistakable lack of personal hygiene.
The sensory detail becomes so intense that viewers may feel they can almost smell the bodies through the screen, while violence is presented directly and without embellishment, from beheadings to arrows piercing bodies. Greengrass, a former Oscar nominee, uses a realistic and raw cinematic style that places viewers at the heart of events.
Muted, faded colours dominate the images, creating the sardonic impression that the sun may not have risen before the 18th century. The shaky handheld camera also gives the scenes an immediate and brutal quality that can become unsettling at times. England at this stage appears as a country exhausted by death and poverty: the empty, desolate fields reflect the decline in population, while people move heavily, covered in dirt and the marks of fatigue.
An England exhausted under the weight of plague and taxes
Sorrow hangs over the setting and the characters, while the visual rhythm deepens the sense of exhaustion and turns the environment itself into an essential part of the storytelling, rather than merely a historical backdrop. The story takes place in 1381 in eastern England, three decades after the spread of the plague that killed between one-third and one-half of the population.
The epidemic left behind a society labouring under taxes, while the country was ruled by the teenage King Richard II, played by Woody Norman, who received guidance from wealthy, fawning advisers seeking to expand their influence and power. At the centre of events is a poor farmer played by Andrew Garfield, known as the Ploughman because of the many years he spent ploughing the land alongside his ox.
The film presents him struggling on a small plot of land sunk in mud, covered in clay and barely able to catch his breath. The plague has taken his wife and children, leaving him only a hut and an animal that sometimes shares his shelter, along with a gruelling daily struggle for survival.
The Ploughman joins the leaders of the popular revolt
The Ploughman’s life changes when he is confronted with an order imposing a new tax. His anger erupts and he suddenly finds himself inside a revolt led by various figures. They include the Reverend John Ball, played by Jimmy Bell, who leads a religious movement calling for equality and opposing the corruption of the clergy, and the former soldier Wat Tyler, played by Cosmo Jarvis, who takes on a central military role in the uprising.
The Ploughman joins his friends and neighbours in igniting what became known as the Peasants’ Revolt, and the movement succeeds in mobilising tens of thousands of ordinary English people to march on London. The participants believe their main task is simply to reach the king and present their demands to him, before their hopes collide with a course more brutal and complicated than they expected.
The Peasants’ Revolt rallies all sections of English society
The English historian Dan Jones explains that the term ‘Peasants’ Revolt’, coined by historians, does not reflect the wide range of its participants. The movement was not limited to the destitute: entire villages took part, joined by local leaders, priests, workers and women, as well as Londoners who had grievances of their own. According to Jones, the rebellion eventually spread across about 85% of the country.
The uprising was not directed at the king alone. In Jones’s description, it was a genuine popular movement against advisers, bishops, nobles and corrupt officials. The historian says the cause was just, but that the revolt spiralled horribly out of control.
The grievances were real and people were being exploited, but the uprising acquired a brutal character, with the violence extending beyond royal officials to people who had played no part in imposing the taxes. The revolt eventually reached breaking point and its military leader, Wat Tyler, was killed, while the king managed to calm the crowds.
The government then pursued and executed the leaders of the revolt, and revoked the charters of freedom. Measured against the extent to which it achieved its basic demands, the uprising appears almost entirely unsuccessful, despite its breadth and the justice of some of its motivations. In terms of its portrayal, the film raises the question of why the Ploughman is given striking fighting abilities despite having spent his life in the fields rather than on battlefields.
The performances are nevertheless strong overall, with Jimmy Bell and Cosmo Jarvis standing out as the two rebel leaders. Katherine Waterston also gives an affecting performance as King Richard’s mother, despite having limited dialogue. Sky Yang makes a strong impression as the Scribe, whose role is crucial to the development of events.
Woody Norman, the young Irish actor, gives a compelling performance in his scenes, portraying a teenage king bearing deep psychological scars while also revealing considerable cunning and guile, making him one of the film’s strongest acting elements. The Uprising runs for 2 hours and 7 minutes and is rated for adults only because of its violent and bloody scenes.
Theatre critic Frank Scheck described the film as a finely crafted work in terms of its production and performances, but exhausting for viewers, referring to the intensity of the violence, the bleak visual atmosphere and the oppressive pace that runs through the story.
Andrew Garfield told Time magazine that he believes everyone who watches the film will ask themselves what can be done in the face of such grave injustice, and how one can struggle for the right to a life marked by freedom, dignity and human solidarity. His statement places the work’s ethical and political questions at the forefront of the experience, rather than treating the events as a historical episode disconnected from the present.
Greengrass’s approach draws on his early experience in documentary films, through which he recorded unrest in Northern Ireland, the apartheid system in South Africa and other places where political systems had collapsed. The director says revolutions have always devoured themselves: they begin with people’s hopes and grand dreams, then turn into chaos once power is overthrown. He therefore leaves audiences to reflect and draw their own conclusions in the light of the medieval events, which he sees as a reflection of a turbulent reality.
Arts critic Lacy Baugher Milas considers the film’s ending disappointing, but otherwise regards it as a historical epic worth watching, animated by a contemporary spirit rarely found in works of this kind.
This assessment combines an acknowledgement of the ending’s weaknesses with praise for the film’s ability to turn a revolt that took place in 1381 into a treatment connected to present-day questions of freedom, power and violence.
