“The Uprising” Review

While an auteur staying true to their artistic vision may usually be cause for celebration, Paul Greengrass’s unwavering commitment to nauseating shaky cam makes “The Uprising” a dreary headache of a film even as it possesses some resonant political themes and powerful performances.

Andrew Garfield plays a peasant in 1381 England who takes on his profession as his name: Ploughman. As a series of title cards explain, the Black Death has ravaged the land, wiping out half of the population and leaving those who survive haunted by grief and anger. With King Richard II (Woody Norman) a mere teenager, the country is ruled by a council of self-serving aristocrats who choose to tax the commoners beyond reason rather than sacrifice their own comfort.

After suffering one indignity too many, Ploughman lashes out violently against the King’s tax collectors, inciting a revolt and inspiring countless others that justice is possible with an appeal directly to the King. Leading his own army, Ploughman finds himself working alongside the heretic priest John Ball (Jamie Bell) and a soldier recently returned from the Hundred Years War in France, Wat Tyler (Cosmo Jarvis), each with their own revolutionary agendas.

Greengrass dives right into the titular uprising with the barest attempt at a preamble and the characters suffer for it. Ploughman in particular is an ambivalent protagonist, seemingly swept from scene to scene against his will, rarely displaying any sort of agency or opinion. Following this passive protagonist results in a languorous pace, such that even when violence occurs the film feels like a slog.

The film’s dullness is further amplified by its unsaturated color palette, as if color itself was a privilege nowhere to be found in the Middle Ages. Every image is washed in shades of grey and brown, made all the more nauseating by the camera’s constant jitters, a surefire guarantee to convert a pleasant day into a headache and a minor headache into a roaring migraine.

While the characters are never adequately developed, the performers do their best to elevate them to something worthy of empathy, with Cosmo Jarvis and Jamie Bell as two standouts as opposite leaders in a revolution: Jarvis as the battle-weary soldier tired of violence but determined for justice while Bell rages against the immorality of a country that preaches the gospel while enriching itself at the expense of its most powerless citizens.

As the mobs march towards London, the drama takes on the sense of gloomy inevitability that is undeniably affecting as we witness the powerless trying to reclaim their dignity from those who hoard the nation’s wealth for themselves. These moments of political poignancy – watching the rich preach honor to the masses while behaving dishonorably themselves and seeing mobs descend into violence no matter how much leaders think they can control them – are almost worth the price of admission. But only almost.

The Uprising
Rated R for violence/bloody images.
Running Time: 2 hours and 8 minutes.

Director Paul Greengrass
Writers Paul Greengrass
Stars Andrew Garfield, Jamie Bell, Stephen Dillane, Tom Hollander, Cosmo Jarvis, Thomasin McKenzie, Jonny Lee Miller, Woody Norman, Katherine Waterston
Rating R
Running Time 128 Minutes
Genres Action, Drama, History, War