Why ‘The Uprising’ Is a Fitting September 11 Release

What does a film about the English Peasant’s Revolt of 1381 have to do with the September 11 attacks? British director Paul Greengrass is releasing The Uprising on the 25th anniversary of one of America’s most tragic days, and I suspect it’s intentional. After all, Greengrass’s most acclaimed film is about the attacks, United 93 (2006). The timing of his latest film’s release invites us to consider the parallels between two violent, galvanizing events.

The Uprising (rated R for violence) stars Andrew Garfield as a peasant farmer (known only by the name “Ploughman”) who teams up with Wat Tyler (Cosmo Jarvis) and John Ball (Jamie Bell) to rebel against unfair taxes and demand justice from a corrupt monarchy (led by 14-year-old King Richard II). As the film shows how the boiling up of grievances explodes into an organized attempt to violently overthrow enemies, the connection to United 93 becomes clearer. The connection isn’t one of moral equivalence, as if the “causes” of both revolts are equally just. Rather, it’s that both films viscerally show the terror and anarchy of attempted, if ultimately unsuccessful, revolutions.

It’s a theme Greengrass explores in several of his other films too, like Captain Phillips (about the 2009 attempt of Somali pirates to commandeer a Maersk cargo ship) or 22 July (about the right-wing extremist who carried out Norway’s worst terrorist attack in 2011).

Greengrass is less interested in the political or ideological justifications of would-be revolutionaries than in the drama—and tragedy—of that moment when their seething rage, bubbling up from a sincerely believed cause, gives way to radical violence. History’s most infamous days aren’t driven by ambivalence. They’re the product of someone’s idea of justice, often warped into delusion and aggravated by hate.

History’s most infamous days aren’t driven by ambivalence.

But violent revolutionaries always meet fierce, bloody resistance. This is part of what makes United 93 so visceral: watching Todd Beamer (David Alan Basche) and fellow passengers mount their “counteruprising” to thwart the terrorists’ cataclysmic intentions, fighting to the death. It’s what makes the U.S. military response in the final act of Captain Phillips so intense. It’s why a film like Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty (2012) is cathartic for Americans shaken by Osama bin Laden’s September 11 terror.

The Uprising is different from those films in important ways, but it follows a similar pattern and finds drama in the same “violent clash” vein.

Cycles of Violence

From start to finish, The Uprising is a tale of violence begetting violence. In one of the first scenes, we see Ploughman (Garfield) observe the king’s officials performing heinous acts of violence against peasant women. It leads Ploughman to his own act of violence in response, which the film suggests is the “spark” that incites the firestorm of the burgeoning peasant revolt.

At various points in the film, the peasant rebels appear to gain the upper hand, taking power back from their oppressors, only for the scales to tip back against them with violent force. The film’s third act shows this most forcefully, as the cycles of violent action and reaction start to repeat in quicker succession.

It’s not a spoiler to note that The Uprising is meant to be an “origin story” of sorts for Robin Hood. Garfield’s “Ploughman” character is inspired by the 14th-century English poem Piers Plowman, which also happens to contain the first known literary reference to Hood. This mythological hero has endured, in part, because of how cathartic it is for those suffering injustice to watch corrupt elites get their comeuppance. It’s not surprising that a redistributive justice-oriented vigilante, who breaks the law to right the law, is so universally appealing.

But as The Uprising effectively captures, this approach is both thrilling and conflicting to watch. In the hands of fallen sinners, even the most righteous intentions of justice often morph into a new form of corruption. The cycle is eons old: Oppressed overtake oppressors, become the new oppressors. Rinse, repeat.

When Seeking Justice Creates New Injustice

Even if Greengrass isn’t primarily interested in the moral evaluation of the righteousness of justice-seeking uprisings, inevitably his films do leave audiences with sympathies toward one side over the other.

In United 93, Captain Phillips, and 22 July, we’re clearly meant to feel for the victims of the terrorists rather than for the terrorist-instigators. And in The Uprising, we’re clearly meant to empathize more with the peasant mob (who, interestingly, are called “deplorables” by one character) than we are with Richard II and his corrupt courtly advisers who impose such cruelties on the peasantry. Still, the lasting emotion, after we watch the bloodbath unfold (including no small number of beheadings—this is a very violent film), is lament for a world where cycles of retributive violence are intractable.

In our sin-sick world, we’re right to seek justice. The desire is good. But our good aims often bend in self-serving, fleshly directions that only make matters worse.

In the hands of fallen sinners, even the most righteous intentions of justice often morph into a new form of corruption.

Even Ploughman, arguably one of the more virtuous characters, falls prey to this. For much of the film, his motivations are pure and humble. He’s just a farmer who lost everything in the Plague (his wife and children included). He’s being overtaxed and forced to “work the land beyond what it can give us,” and he only wants the simplest and most basic of all human desires: rest. But his motivations change as the film goes on, and by the end he’s driven by rage and revenge.

What, ultimately, could stop this cycle? What could create circumstances of perfect rest and freedom, such that uprisings and oppression cease? Only a perfectly good king.

Longing for a True and Better King

A striking scene occurs in the middle of The Uprising when, for a brief moment, we catch a glimpse of the sort of peace and justice a good king can foster. In the scene, Richard II (played with potent complexity by Woody Norman) is meeting with Ploughman, Tyler, and Ball to hear their petitions for justice: “We ask for justice, my Lord, for the crooked ways to be made straight—that is all.”

He hears them (or so it seems). And for a moment, this “messiah king” (as kings in those days were perceived) feels like a truly good king and a real proxy for the Messiah God himself. He even makes the connection explicit: “God hears you. Your king hears you.” It’s a momentary vision of a kingdom where the ruler is righteous, serves the people, seeks shalom, brokers peace, and administers perfect justice.

But it’s a fleeting mirage—or a cruel deception. In the end, the scene’s power is mostly eschatological. It reminds us of our souls’ craving for a perfectly trustworthy king.

Until that king reigns, uprisings—some successful, many failed—will be the way of the world, because injustice is the way of the world. This isn’t to shrug and say there’s nothing for us to do in the face of injustice. We ought not to be apathetic or numb. But an eschatological perspective, and a sober awareness of sin (in others and in ourselves), should temper our expectations and guard us against “heaven on earth” utopianism.

Robin Hood can’t make the crooked ways straight. But his myth stirs our hearts because we long for—and wait for—the hero who can.