Not unlike his previous role as Spider-Man, Andrew Garfield plays an ordinary young man who becomes heroic in “The Uprising.”
In the historical drama, Garfield plays Ploughman, a farmer who joins the Peasants Revolt of 1381, the real-life event that inspired the legend of Robin Hood.
At one point, Garfield’s character pulls up a mask and hood and becomes an almost superherioc figure, a precursor to Robin Hood that reminded him a bit of his “Spider-Man” days.
“I think I remember that doing that scene at the gravesite, and I think I was actually resistant to pulling up the mask and putting pulling up the hood, and [writer and director Paul Greengrass] insisted on it, and righteously,” Garfield told PauseRewind’s Elizabeth Stanton. “That’s why he’s the director. I think there was some probably some PTSD that I was bringing in that was my own thing, and he helped me get through it.”
Garfrield’s Ploughman and other farmers, soldiers, and everyday peasants take up arms against the King Richard II in protest of high taxes and other abuses from the ruling class.
“It felt very visceral when I read Paul’s script. I felt like I was I was getting wounded right in the place where I needed to be wounded by this script. It was like, oh yeah, that’s what I’m feeling. That’s what we’re all feeling in terms of what the Ploughman is feeling and what these other characters are feeling,” Garfield said.
He continued, “It’s hard to put into words, but it’s some kind of desire to set the world right, to move humanity back towards eternal things, a birthright of belonging of the dignity of the human soul, and that feeling that we’re all being kind of squeezed to the point of having to say enough, that’s enough, we’ve given you enough, no more. It felt very personal somehow, and I thought if I’m feeling this, there’s no doubt that I would imagine everyone else on this planet is feeling some version of this. So it felt very, very important to be a part of the project for me.”
Thomasin McKenzie co-stars in the film as Alyce, a fictionalized version of the many women involved in the revolution.
“I think I’ve always found film and storytelling to be a fantastic way to express whatever is going on in the world or within myself, and this film felt like the perfect opportunity to express the collective rage and distrust of leadership and to question what we’re being told to do or what we’re being told is right,” McKenzie said. “Hopefully it gets the viewers of the film thinking too.”
Writer and director Paul Greengrass explained the film is echoing history, calling it “eerily contemporary.”
“I think you follow the story of this uprising, and you know you’re in the middle of it, and it folds on front of you, and you know it’s a great sort of cinematic spectacle, and you want to know what’s going to happen at the end of it. I think that’s the point,” Greengrass said.
“You don’t want to give people a history lesson. You want to give them an experience in the cinema that that’s entertaining and exciting, and leaves them at the end emotionally fulfilled, and maybe just thinking a little bit about the world as well as they go home,” he added.
The characters from the real-life history, like Wat Tyler (played by Cosmo Jarvis) and John Ball (played by Jamie Bell), drew Greengrass in because they are figures who came from seemingly nowhere but left a powerful impact on the world.
“Nobody knew anything about Wat Tyler, and then suddenly he’s there in the center of our history for about two days, and then he disappears again, and that’s really, I love that idea about this story. That out of nowhere, this huge event occurs, and you know we take Andrew’s character and Thomasin’s character and put them in the middle of it, and they go on this journey and you want to know what’s going to happen to them at the end,” Greengrass said.
“The Uprising” is in theaters September 11.
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