“The Uprising”
The latest action flick from “Jason Bourne” director Paul Greengrass has been marred by a marketing fumble that hailed the movie as a Robin Hood origin story. “Witness the rise of Robin Hood,” was the mid-summer tagline until Focus Features caught flack — too much of a spoiler, and not the story’s focus — and walked it back. Now that the cat’s out of the bag, the reveal of Andrew Garfield’s rebel Ploughman as Robin Hood arrives late in the movie, as a semi-gotcha. But it’s really a non-issue since “Uprising” works on its own as a period piece about the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt in England, Robin Hood subtitle or not. It takes place after the Black Death of the mid-1300s, when half the population has been wiped out. Fourteen-year-old King Richard II (Woody Norman, foppishly excellent as the effete and conniving overload) and his court of corrupt advisors are economically squeezing peasants and serfs under the Poll Tax to finance the ongoing war with France and the lush life of the royals. Commoners must toil under inhumane conditions and give up all they reap to the king — resist and die. During one such incursion, a peasant wanting to hold reserves to feed his family is beaten, which is when Garfield’s Ploughman (that is all he is called) wades in and gives it back fist-for-fist. The film frames this as a major galvanizing point in the sweeping peasant uprising led by Wat Tyler (Cosmo Jarvis) and monk John Ball (Jamie Bell). Ball and Tyler were real historical figures; Garfield’s working man is loosely pulled from William Langland’s “Piers Plowman” — the OG Robin Hood — which was put down on paper around the same time as the plague and revolt. Other (later) tellings of Robin Hood — the ones that begat Errol Flynn’s randy forest romp of 1938 and Ridley Scott’s 2010 redux starring Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett — placed the cloaked outlaw further back in time (1199/1200) with King Richard the Lionheart (Richard I), King John, and the Sheriff of Nottingham as the faces of tyranny.
Welcome to the Robin-verse, where moral depictions of the famed fugitive vary widely. Earlier this year, we got the “Death of Robin Hood,” starring Hugh Jackman as a lion in winter who rues his murderous past but is unable to escape it. Greengrass, too — he wrote the script as well as directed — eschews any enshrining hagiography and leans in on grim, historical realities. The era recreation — littered with muddy trenches — by Greengrass and crew feels authentic, and the simmering build-up and taut orchestration of tension is impressive. The storming of London and the Tower of London, where the king and his retinue are holed up, begins as an earnest effort to free the king. After an arranged meeting outside the city walls does not yield the promised audience with the king, Tyler and Ball suspect a ruse by the council and amass the mob. From there, the film becomes a deadly game of political chess that ebbs and flows like a Shakespearean plot where guile and misrepresentation are weapons mightier than the sword and arrow.
As the seething and righteous Ploughman, Garfield is steeled with resolve but not without doubt and vulnerability. Bell and Jarvis are likewise solid and convincing as the movement’s leaders. Adding a degree of stateliness and civility to the affair is Katherine Waterston (“Inherent Vice,” “Alien Covenant”) as the young king’s mother and voice of reason and humanity.
The true and all-too eerie realization dealt in “Uprising” is the devious control of power through information manipulation and narrative control — the ability to dictate political outcomes and distort reality. Flash forward to AI and billionaire tech bros with a direct line to the castle — I mean, White House — as the wealth gap widens and misinformation and policies favoring the elite proliferate. Langland’s Plowman was folklore, the face of Everyman — wronged just the same as the rest — standing up and providing hope. Where is our Robin today? (Tom Meek)
Playing at Apple Cinemas Cambridge and AMC Assembly Row 12
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