Michael Andrillon | Staff Writer
“You foolish old men”.
Words not uttered by the many rebels and peasants just outside the city gates, rather it is stated by the king, Richard II towards his council who are trying to maintain their powerful positions through excess taxation to fund a foreign war.
As if that wasn’t enough, this is just after a major pandemic due to the black plague, and…yeah it’s blunt with its parallels, and this was no doubt a major intrigue going in.
The film wastes little time in establishing the backdrop of the 1381 Peasant’s Revolt and highlights the exploitation and class dynamics that quickly culminate into an explosion of collective retaliation.
It’s hard not to be amused that this is all experienced though the Ploughman, played by Andrew Garfield, as a sort of surrogate for the everyday person, conscious enough to realize that things need to change, but just short of an extremist commitment to any agenda beyond improving the state of affairs.
Andrew Garfield as Ploughman in “The Uprising” | Courtesy of Focus Features
Its strong start however, are also elements that come to haunt the plot throughout, as the Ploughman just isn’t interesting enough to really carry so much of the story, and generally everyone falls into pretty predictable archetypes that turns the movie into pretty standard historical action flair in the vein of “Braveheart”, without the amusing charms of that film.
The blade always seems hesitant to pierce the flesh, as the occasional head rolls, and bodies are grappled. And I found myself yawning more and more as we reached the pretty ridiculous conclusion that is just straight up fictionalized to try and tie a sweet bow on what should be an aggressive story.
It is not without some decent craftsmanship. The quiet whispers and interactions of the monarchy, versus the chatter and consistent motion of the peasants communicate the rigidities of the upper class versus the elevated class conscious potential for fluidity through community in the peasants. The serfs are deeply connected to the earth whilst the royals are almost always seen on horses visually elevating themselves as detached from the affairs and toils of the working class.
Ambiguity is also present for the violence at times which seems to reflect the uncertainty of the Ploughman’s internal conflict towards the rebellion’s chaotic spirit as it channels the same power of life and death as the state they sought to rebel against had inflicted onto them.
What sadly makes this film the most relevant to our current period however, is less the actual subject matter and more so that in few and far between moments of thematic awareness, we are still left with a movie that isn’t willing to bite on a truly visceral call to action that would make this experience memorable. And that in just being a movie most will probably not see or take much out of, we can only dream of revolution through the rose tinted glasses of modern movie tropes.
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