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The Peasants Are Revolting in this Dreary, Dispassionate Medieval Drama

The Peasant’s Revolt of 1381 is a curious episode of history as it represents likely the closest the peasantry of Medieval England actually got to overthrowing their aristocrats. It was a full-on movement that swept the countryside and made its way to London in very dramatic terms. But, like with almost any rebellion against the crown it was ultimately a failure. And the serfs continued to live in severe poverty and servitude to the upper classes for several centuries to come. It is an interesting thing to dramatize, hard to make into a cathartic story about class revolution that has resonance for a modern audience.
That is what Paul Greengrass grapples with in The Uprising, a rare period film for the director known for his gritty true story modern action films (although he did make News of the World a few years back). His particular visual language is odd to see in a medieval context, specifically his use of shaky handheld camerawork which feels rather dissonant and distracting in this world. But odder are his efforts at crafting a story out of it that doesn’t fit its framework.
The central figures of this Peasants Revolt were a soldier called Wat Tyler (here played by Cosmo Jarvis) and a “heretical” priest John Ball (Jamie Bell). But the movie’s central figure is a nameless Ploughman played by Andrew Garfield who lost his family in the Plague a few years earlier. Richard II (Woody Norman) sits on the throne, but as a child much of the actual ruling is done by his council of advisors, who in search of funds and unwilling to tax the clergy and merchants for political reasons foist it on the peasantry -the latest in a series of tax hikes. When a collector comes to Kent to enforce it, callously disregarding any misery as his men abuse the locals, the Ploughman confronts him openly and the peasants rally behind him, killing some of their men and sending a message back to the king. It sets off a chain reaction in villages around the country and before long an army of Peasants march towards London with a list of demands from the king in favour of more equal rights.
It is a very grey movie aesthetically, desaturated in reflection perhaps of the bleak conditions these peasants live under as well as their limited prospects and perhaps even the inevitable futility of their rebellion. Or it could just be because it is such a typical (and inaccurate) sheen under which to tell medieval stories. Either way, it makes the film look and feel dreary and dim in spite of the rich energy that motivates the peasant ideologues. There is a lot of justice in their cause and even some real passion expressed by Ball and the Ploughman, who each speak with the fury of labour leaders -so too does Alyce, a young former nun played by Thomasin McKenzie. Tyler meanwhile is curiously rather mellow -difficult to buy as a leader of this movement over the Ploughman. Yet such pointed emphasis on their decrepit, despairing conditions clouds their sentiments, keeps their fight from coming alive. And I can't help but wonder if that is a part of Greengrass's intention.
Aiming ostensibly for a holistic interpretation of the conflict, Greengrass showcases the king and his nobles as much as the peasants, and for much of the film lays the blame on them for the escalating violent confrontations -the king, tormented by nightmarish visions, meekly allowing them license to rule on the matter. Played by Stephen Dillane, Tom Hollander, and Stanley Townsend, Greengrass casts them as a collective of vile and snobbish cronies. It is a similar thinness to how he characterizes many of the collected peasants, and especially the differences in their tactics and desired outcomes. A point is made when meeting with the king that the Ploughman disagrees with Ball’s insistence on the execution of the king’s advisors as part of their demands -and there are other points of discord amongst the various factions that aren’t earnestly explored and mostly seem present to presage the peasants as a rabble, undisciplined and uncontrollable -which we see in the chaos of their eventual sacking of London that utterly appalls and horrifies the Ploughman, stating with pride it was never what he wanted out of the revolt, despite generally being a larger scale equivalent of what he himself led back in his village, albeit with the addition of the wanton execution of their oppressors  and some unbecoming looting. Greengrass clearly intends his audience to share the Ploughman’s point-of-view, sharing the broad ideology of his rebels while disapproving of their tactics, and it is hard not to see in Greengrass’s framing of both the conflict and this character a very middling neoliberal attitude towards civil disobedience -dramatically mediocre as well.
That may also be an apt descriptor for the film's action and violence. Greengrass's shaky-cam technique really kills several sequences, making the action choreography indecipherable and coming across entirely anachronistic. It is a device that usually indicates a gritty and grounded context, putting the audience into the throes of the action, but it really doesn't fit a medieval story like this, nor the kind of action that is predominant here -namely crowd scenes and chaotic collective outbursts with few one-on-one confrontations. One sequence towards the end makes better use of these devices, and the stakes of the scene compliment such a style better. -it is also in daylight compared to the darkness or paleness of other collisions. But overall it is rather messy, and not in a way that elevates the movie.
The Uprising tells a worthwhile story, though it is obviously not ultimately a happy one. And the movie sticks true to that into the climax, also correcting a characterization that appeared to be a major historical deviation up to that point. And yet Greengrass clearly feels the need to give his audience at least a minor catharsis, leading to an epilogue made up out of cloth that is utterly perplexing in its writing, its tone, and its implications, suggesting the movie was something wildly different than it purported to be with a new conclusion that makes no sense at all. It feels like an effort to make history into its own convoluted cinematic universe. At best, it is just unbelievably hackneyed.
The film would not have been particularly strong without it, but its inclusion is maddeningly crippling. There are entertaining beats throughout the film, some interesting acting from the likes of Bell and Katherine Waterston as the quasi-sympathetic Queen Mother, and to be fair some of the elements that come off as far-fetched are indeed true to the historical record, and it is an overlooked episode of medieval history worth an examination like this. But The Uprising is a visually and politically tedious film, at times irritatingly composed, and its' tacked-on ending reeks of cowardice and condescension, as well as just being bafflingly dumb. Just as in the story, the peasants deserve better.

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