The Uprising: Paul Greengrass, the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, and the Ideological Limits of Liberal Cinema

Paul Greengrass’s The Uprising marks the first major effort by a contemporary director to portray a key mass uprising in medieval Europe: the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. This is noteworthy because the film industry has traditionally focused on the dramas of monarchs, aristocrats, and court factions. At the same time, moments of direct action by the oppressed have often been marginal or considered too risky to explore. Greengrass’s ambitious, sometimes uneven film highlights the lasting significance of 1381 and exposes the deep ideological concerns of today’s cultural establishment.

The revolt of 1381 stands as one of the earliest and most intense displays of popular anger against feudal exploitation. Thousands of peasants, artisans, and labourers marched to London, freed prisoners, executed despised officials, and occupied the capital for several days. This mass uprising exhibited remarkable courage and clarity, fueled by oppressive taxation, the repercussions of the Black Death, and the strict hierarchies of feudal society. However, films have seldom portrayed it. This is no accident; bourgeois cinema often favours stories about kings and nobles, portrays conflict as personal drama, and tends to shy away from depicting collective action by oppressed groups. Such portrayal challenges social order, legitimacy, and class structures.

Greengrass’s film opens powerfully, depicting the harshness of feudal taxation and how personal suffering sparks collective anger. Andrew Garfield’s Ploughman, Jamie Bell’s John Ball, and Cosmo Jarvis’s Wat Tyler are depicted with seriousness and dignity. Ball’s egalitarian sermon, “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” preserves its radical impact. Greengrass recognises that the rebellion was not a conspiracy but a spontaneous outburst of class rage, illustrating a society pushed to its limits.

The film accurately depicts that, initially, the rebels did not oppose the king. They believed Richard II was a just ruler, misled by corrupt advisers. This idea of the “good king” was common among peasant groups and, as Engels later noted in his analysis of the 1525 German Peasant War, reflected the structural position of peasants in feudal society. Spread out in villages, bound to the land, without a unified plan, they could rally heroically but lacked a vision for a new social system. Their tragedy was not naivety but real-world limitations.

The film struggles in its latter half. Once the rebels take over the king’s council, Greengrass shows the night descending into looting and random violence. The camera increasingly focuses on the palace window view, portraying the crowd as an irrational, frightening force. The deliberate, calculated violence by the ruling class is seen as treachery, rooted in personal betrayal, whereas the violence by the oppressed is depicted as chaos. This reflects a typical liberal view of revolution—sympathising with the oppressed while simultaneously fearing their autonomous actions.

The studio made a decisive change just three weeks before the release, renaming the film as The Uprising: The Rise of Robin Hood. This new title drew on a brief epilogue showing the Ploughman wearing a green hood and ambushing the king in Sherwood Forest. This connection of Robin Hood to the events of 1381 is not just a marketing tactic, but reflects an ideological shift. It shifts focus from collective resistance to individual heroism, replacing mass activism with personal rebellion. Clearly, the studio decided that portraying a collective uprising against exploitation wouldn't attract enough viewers.

Greengrass’s film, despite its strengths, struggles to resolve its perspective on the rebellion it portrays fully. It sympathises with the peasants’ pursuit of justice but is uncomfortable with their tactics. The film begins with a serious historical tone and ends in a mythic way. The key lesson from 1381 emphasises the importance of the oppressed taking independent action, rather than outlaws like those in Sherwood Forest- a message that remains relevant today.

A society strained to the breaking point.

Greengrass begins The Uprising after the Black Death, the devastating pandemic that killed half of England's population and disrupted social order. Few modern films have depicted the scale of this upheaval. The plague did more than reduce the population; it challenged the very ideology of feudal society. Labour shortages threatened landowners' economic dominance, wages increased, and the ruling class responded with repression—implementing wage controls, raising taxes, and trying to keep peasants tied to the land. Greengrass’s opening scenes, where young King Richard II and the nobles and clergy decide that the Church and merchants cannot be taxed, so the burden falls on peasants, embody the core principle of class rule. The elite protects itself, shifting the crisis's costs downward. Today’s workers recognise this pattern.

Andrew Garfield’s Ploughman symbolically echoes Langland’s Piers Plowman, an allegorical poem about social injustice and moral defiance. He begins by burying his family, victims of the plague. The tax collector insists he pays “death taxes' again, citing missing documentation. The scene highlights bureaucratic cruelty- cold, impersonal, and typical of a system where the poor must constantly justify their existence to the wealthy. Greengrass depicts village girls being humiliated, forced to strip so soldiers can verify their taxable age, in a straightforward manner that avoids sensationalism. This serves as a stark reminder that feudal exploitation was real, enforced through physical control, surveillance, and looming violence.

The film's most powerful moments are in its early sequences. Greengrass excels at capturing the moment when personal suffering transforms into collective outrage as individual grievances, long suppressed, resonate with others' experiences. The rebellion ignites not through conspiracy or manipulation but because of the unbearable burden of exploitation. A single act of defiance sparks in a landscape full of flammable material. This portrayal is historically accurate. The Peasants’ Revolt wasn’t premeditated; it broke out unexpectedly. It stemmed from years of accumulated resentment, intensified by the poll tax and harsh enforcement tactics.

Jamie Bell’s portrayal of John Ball and Cosmo Jarvis’s Wat Tyler captures the revolt’s historical leadership. Ball, a radical priest whose sermons energised the countryside, is depicted with seriousness and conviction. His well-known statement, “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” maintains its powerful call for equality. It stands as one of the earliest clear assertions of human equality challenging divine hierarchy. Greengrass lets this line stand out without adornment. In a society that saw hierarchy as natural and divine, Ball’s words directly challenge the ideological roots of feudalism.

Jarvis’s Tyler, a seasoned soldier, appears disciplined, focused, and politically aware. While not a proto-revolutionary in the modern sense, he understands the stakes. The film portrays Tyler and Ball collaborating to bring coherence to the revolt, articulate demands, organise the march on London, and contain some of the crowd's more destructive tendencies. This depiction is grounded in history. The revolt was not without leadership; rather, it lacked a class able to maintain political organisation beyond the immediate crisis.

Greengrass’s portrayal of the march on London stands out as one of the film’s greatest achievements. The rebels appear purposeful rather than chaotic and angry rather than reckless. The scenes of prison openings, the burning of John of Gaunt's palace, and the execution of the Archbishop of Canterbury are depicted as acts of political justice, not mere random violence. For several days, the insurgents effectively control the capital. The film highlights the remarkable fact that Europe's most rigidly hierarchical society was temporarily upended from below.

Greengrass's portrayal captures the sense of possibility often missing in many historical dramas. The peasants, artisans, and labourers who marched on London weren't just reacting to oppression; they were asserting their agency. They believed—though mistakenly—that they could appeal to the king, achieve justice, and make the world fairer. These illusions were structural rather than psychological, rooted in their worldview. As Engels later noted in his study of the German Peasant War of 1525, while the peasantry could rise heroically, they couldn't, on their own, establish a new social order. Their fragmented, local existence and dependence on the monarchy limited their broader ambitions.

Greengrass’s initial sequences, marked by clarity and seriousness, nearly recognise this reality. They depict a society in turmoil, with a ruling class intent on maintaining its privileges and a mass of oppressed individuals realising their collective power. These moments bring The Uprising close to true historical understanding—before the film’s subsequent ideological withdrawal into fear, chaos, and eventually myth.

Illusions in the monarchy and their tragic consequences

Greengrass correctly highlights that the rebels initially did not oppose King Richard II. They regarded him as just but were deceived by malicious advisors. This trust in the “good king” was not naïve but reflected the peasantry’s social position within feudal society. As peasants spread across countless villages, connected to the land and without any national organization, they could stage significant and heroic revolts but struggled to envision a new social structure. Their demands to abolish serfdom, end feudal dues, and dismantle legal ties to the land were radical, yet articulated within feudal ideas. They looked to the monarch as a defender of justice, not as the system’s. This text emphasises Engels' key political insight from the German Peasants' War of 1525, which applies to 1381 as well. It highlights that while the peasantry can overthrow feudalism through a courageous, widespread uprising, they cannot establish a new order. Engels explained that the tragedy wasn't their lack of bravery or clarity, but the social constraints they faced. Their local focus, land dependence, and loyalty to the monarchy prevented them from forming a sustainable plan to succeed beyond destroying the old system.

Greengrass stages the betrayal of the rebels with considerable dramatic force. At Mile End, Richard II promises sweeping concessions: the abolition of serfdom, freedom of labour, and the redress of grievances. The rebels disperse, believing they have won. The film captures the extraordinary moment when Europe's most rigidly hierarchical society seemed on the brink of transformation. But the promises were a calculated deception. Once the rebels had returned home, the king revoked every concession. The ruling class acted with cold calculation, not treachery born of emotion but treachery born of class necessity. The feudal order could not survive the fulfilment of the rebels’ demands; therefore, the rebels had to be destroyed.

The depiction of Wat Tyler's death at Smithfield emphasises its brutality. While negotiating with the king, Tyler is unexpectedly killed. This scene symbolises more than personal betrayal; it reaffirms feudal authority. Tyler’s death signifies the fall of the revolt’s leaders and the start of a counter-revolution. John Ball, a radical priest known for his inspiring sermons, is captured and executed—hanged, drawn, and quartered. In response, hundreds of rebels are executed nationwide. Greengrass highlights how this repression is methodical: rather than panic, the ruling class restores order through terror.

One of the film’s strengths is its clear portrayal of betrayal. It illustrates that the ruling class won the revolt not with better arguments or morals but through violence and deception. However, Greengrass does not fully explore the political implications. The betrayal was not accidental; it was inevitable. The peasantry’s trust in the king was rooted in their class ideology, which could not yet act independently of the monarchy. Their defeat stemmed from structural constraints, not personal errors.

In this sense, The Uprising brushes against a significant historical truth but doesn’t fully reach it. The 1381 revolt was one of medieval Europe’s major mass uprisings, yet it failed because its leadership couldn’t go beyond the social system they aimed to challenge. Greengrass highlights this betrayal; Engels clarifies why it was inevitable. The film’s most powerful scenes hint at this understanding, though later parts shy away from exploring these deeper implications.

The descent into “mob” framing

The film struggles in its second half. After the rebels take the king’s council- a rare moment in medieval European history when society's lowest classes briefly control political power- Greengrass shows the night descending into looting, drunkenness, and random violence. The Ploughman, Tyler, and Ball are horrified, trying to control what the film repeatedly calls, whether explicitly or implicitly, the “mob.” This change is sudden and revealing. What was once shown as a disciplined, purposeful crowd suddenly appears as an uncontrollable force of nature. The leaders must restrain the crowd to prevent it from self-destructing.

There was violence in 1381, including xenophobic attacks on Flemish immigrants. No serious historian denies this. But the framing matters. Greengrass’s camera increasingly adopts the palace window’s viewpoint: the masses as an unpredictable, terrifying presence, a dark tide threatening to engulf civilisation. The king’s nightmares of “demons”, grotesque, contorted figures emerging from the shadows, become a recurring visual motif. What begins as the subjective fear of a frightened monarch becomes, through repetition and framing, a perspective the film itself partially endorses. The rebels’ seizure of power is not shown as a moment of political possibility but as a descent into chaos.

Liberal filmmaking on revolution often shows sympathy for the oppressed but also reveals a fear of their independence. The oppressed are allowed to suffer, endure, and seek justice, yet when they act together, the camera withdraws. Their collective agency appears threatening, and their violence— even if aimed at their own exploiters—is viewed as disorderly. In contrast, violence by the ruling class—systematic, calculated, and much larger in scale—is seen as legitimate. Treachery is often seen as individual dishonesty rather than a systemic flaw.

This distinction is ideological, not based on fact. In 1381, the ruling class acted with cold strategic intent. Richard II’s promises at Mile End were a calculated deception, meant to scatter the rebels and enable their slaughter. Tyler’s murder at Smithfield was not a tragic mistake but a premeditated killing. The subsequent reprisals—hundreds executed, villages terrorised, leaders hunted—were not random chaos but organised violence by a class defending its authority. However, Greengrass describes this violence as “betrayal,” a moral failing, while portraying the violence of the oppressed as “mob rule,” a natural disaster.

This inversion is key to bourgeois ideology. It shapes how revolutions are usually shown: rulers are portrayed as rational, even if cruel; the masses are seen as emotional, even when justified. The oppressed are granted dignity only while passive. When they act, they become threatening. The latter part of the film exposes the limits of Greengrass’s political vision. He can show exploitation, suffering, and righteous anger, but he struggles to portray the masses as active agents in history rather than unpredictable mobs.

The tragedy is that the 1381 revolt was not chaotic. It was organised, purposeful, and politically consistent within its class perspective. Its violence mainly targeted tools of feudal dominance: tax collectors, judges, officials, and aristocratic symbols. Meanwhile, the ruling class’s violence was unchecked and total. Greengrass’s framing flips this reality. This flip is driven not by past events but by ideology: a deep-rooted liberal fear that the oppressed might act outside the authority of the institutions claiming to serve them.

The second half of the film is not just a narrative mistake but also a political setback. It exposes how modern cinema struggles to portray collective action without framing it as a problem. Instead of highlighting a moment of real historical change, the revolt becomes a warning. Both the camera and the ruling class seem to be afraid of the crowd.

The Robin Hood graft: a revealing capitulation

The most remarkable incident happened not on screen but within the marketing team. Just three weeks before the film’s release, the U.S. distributor suddenly changed the title to The Uprising: The Rise of Robin Hood, citing a short epilogue in which the Ploughman wears a green hood and ambushes the king in Sherwood Forest. The British distributor quickly rejected this change, emphasising that Greengrass's film was a historical epic about the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, not a Robin Hood origin story. Critics called the ending “tacked on” and “damaging,” and they were right. Attaching Robin Hood to 1381 was not just a marketing mistake; it was a revealing political statement.

The rebranding reveals how ideological pressures influence modern filmmaking. The studio apparently decided that depicting a large-scale uprising against exploitation wouldn't attract audiences. Instead, it relied on well-known "intellectual property," reflecting the industry's risk-averse preference for safer content. This shift replaced collective resistance with the narrative of the lone outlaw hero, turning a significant act of political mobilisation into a personal story of defiance. This choice goes beyond marketing; it signals a retreat from the revolt's true political significance.

Robin Hood embodies the bourgeois fantasy of rebellion, representing a form of revolt that lacks social depth. His defiance is personal and moral rather than based on social or structural change—he steals from the rich but does not question wealth or the social relations that create it. Living in the forest rather than in towns and villages, his struggle is individual rather than historical, making him an admired hero who doesn't threaten societal assumptions. Essentially, Robin Hood symbolises rebellion without aiming for revolution.

The Peasants’ Revolt stands in contrast. It was a large-scale uprising involving tens of thousands of peasants, artisans, and labourers who marched to London, liberated prisoners, executed despised officials, and occupied the capital for several days. No lone outlaw orchestrated this; it was a collective assertion of the oppressed class’s strength. Its demands—abolishing serfdom, securing labour freedom, and ending feudal dues—challenged the core structures of the social order. Linking Robin Hood to 1381 distorts the revolt’s significance. Such an attempt represents an ideological retreat and a refusal to face the true meaning of mass action.

The epilogue is politically confusing. The Ploughman ambushes the king but then spares him, claiming his group operates “beyond royal authority.” This sentimental gesture replaces the real historical lesson—that the oppressed must act independently of the ruling class—with a romanticised fantasy of noble outlawry. The film originally depicted the peasants’ trust in the king as their downfall, yet it ends by reinforcing the myth it previously criticised. The collective effort of many, defeated by the ruling elite, is overshadowed by the lone hero lurking in the forest. Ultimately, history becomes folklore and politics becomes myth.

The film’s poor box-office performance, earning only $3.3 million against a $20 million budget, indicates that audiences were not convinced. The rebranding failed to expand the film’s appeal and instead compromised its integrity. Viewers saw the disconnect between the revolt's serious message and the trivial Robin Hood ending. The studio’s panic and distrust of authentic history ultimately harmed the film it was trying to preserve.

The Robin Hood graft exemplifies modern cinema's ideological boundaries. While the industry can portray suffering, injustice, and rebellion, it confines these elements within familiar narrative structures. When faced with real mass action, cinema turns to myth. Greengrass’s film, despite its merits, is limited by these constraints, starting with history and ending with legend, and unable to uphold the revolt's true political significance.

Contemporary resonance and contemporary limits

Some reviewers have noted the film’s relevance to today: a society recovering from the pandemic, with elites growing wealthier while workers endure austerity, inflation, and escalating war costs. These similarities are evident. The social landscape of 2026, much like that of 1381, is characterised by stark inequality, political distrust, and a ruling class eager to shift the fallout of its crises onto the populace. Widespread unrest shows up in strikes, protests, and growing anger over living conditions. It's easy to understand why the Peasants’ Revolt inspired Greengrass and why the film’s initial scenes strike such a chord.

Greengrass rightly earns praise for recognising the importance of 1381 and persisting through years of production and cast changes to bring the film to life. He stands out as one of the few modern directors willing to seriously confront issues of state violence and large-scale political movements. Garfield, Bell, and Jarvis deliver earnest performances, and the film’s first half is marked by clarity, urgency, and a sincere effort to understand the revolt on its own terms. However, The Uprising ultimately struggles to decide its stance on the rebellion it portrays. It sympathises with the peasants’ pursuit of justice but feels uneasy about their tactics. The film starts with Engels’s observation that the peasantry could rise heroically but could not, alone, create a new social order, yet it shifts away from this, fading into myth and liberal worry.

The film’s failure to portray oppressed characters acting independently highlights more than just an artistic flaw; it reveals the ideological boundaries of modern cinema. Bourgeois filmmaking can show suffering, injustice, and even rebellion, but only when these elements stay within familiar storytelling structures. When the masses act collectively, gain power, or challenge the current order, the camera pulls back. In these moments, the crowd becomes a “mob,” individual agency dissolves into chaos, and historical events turn into warnings. Greengrass’s film exemplifies this tendency: it starts with the potential for mass action but concludes with the fantasy of a lone outlaw.

The Robin Hood graft exemplifies this retreat most clearly. The studio’s panic—believing that the true history of a mass uprising wouldn't attract audiences—exposes a deep ideological unease with collective resistance. The film’s ending, where the Ploughman spares the king and claims his group is “beyond royal authority,” isn't genuinely political but an outright avoidance of politics. It replaces the lessons of 1381 with a romantic act that leaves issues unresolved.

The lessons of 1381 are not about outlaws in Sherwood Forest but highlight the importance of the oppressed acting independently of the ruling class and its promises. The peasants’ tragedy was not due to a lack of courage but to their misplaced trust in the monarchy, which was based on the fixed social limitations they faced. Their defeat was inevitable: the ruling class responded with calculated strategies, while the peasants lacked the organisation and ideological resources to continue the fight.

The enduring question today is whether the oppressed act independently of the institutions that claim to represent them, especially amid growing inequality, authoritarianism, and war. Greengrass’s film hints at this truth but ultimately pulls back. The true history of 1381, however, cannot be fully understood in Sherwood Forest; it calls for a direct challenge to the social order—an unresolved confrontation.

Articles and Bibliography

Marxist and Theoretical Works

• Friedrich Engels, The Peasant War in Germany. The foundational Marxist analysis of peasant uprisings, indispensable for understanding the structural limitations of rural revolts and the class dynamics that doomed them.
• Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I (sections on primitive accumulation) For the broader context of feudal dissolution, the emergence of capitalist relations, and the role of coercion in restructuring labour.
• Leon Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution (Ch. 1–3): Not directly about 1381, but essential for grasping the Marxist method of analysing mass movements, class agency, and the difference between spontaneous revolt and organised revolutionary leadership.
• George Lukács, History and Class Consciousness: For the theoretical distinction between class “in itself” and class “for itself,” crucial for understanding why the peasantry could revolt but not reorganise society.

Primary and Medieval Sources

• Thomas Walsingham, Historia Anglicana: A contemporary chronicler whose hostile account nonetheless provides detailed descriptions of the events of 1381.
• Jean Froissart, Chroniques: Offers a vivid aristocratic perspective on the revolt, revealing elite anxieties about mass action.
• Langland, Piers Ploughman: The literary backdrop to the Ploughman figure; a major source for understanding popular religious dissent and proto‑egalitarian sentiment.
• The Anonimalle Chronicle: One of the most detailed accounts of the negotiations at Mile End and Smithfield.

Modern Historical Scholarship on 1381

• Rodney Hilton, Bond Men Made Free: Medieval Peasant Movements and the English Rising of 1381. The classic Marxist history of the revolt. Essential for its analysis of class structure, feudal exploitation, and the political consciousness of the rebels.
• Christopher Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages: For the economic pressures that shaped peasant life and contributed to the revolt.
• Alastair Dunn, The Great Rising of 1381: A modern narrative history with strong archival grounding.
• Paul Strohm, Social Chaucer. Useful for understanding the ideological climate of late‑14th‑century England and elite responses to popular unrest.
• Justine Firnhaber‑Baker, The Jacquerie of 1358: A comparative study of another major peasant uprising, illuminating the structural similarities across Europe.

On Feudalism, Class Structure, and Revolt

• Marc Bloch, Feudal Society: A foundational work on the social and economic structures of medieval Europe.
• E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class: Not medieval, but indispensable for understanding how class agency develops historically- a contrast to the peasantry’s structural limitations.
• Guy Bois, The Crisis of Feudalism: For the broader European context of feudal decline and peasant resistance.

Film, Ideology, and Representation

• John Newsinger, “Revolution and the Cinema” (various essays): Marxist analyses of how film treats mass uprisings and class struggle.
• Peter Watkins, interviews on La Commune (Paris 1871): Watkins’s reflections on why mainstream cinema fears collective agency are directly relevant to Greengrass’s retreat into “mob” framing.
• Michael Wayne, Red Kant: Aesthetics, Marxism and the Third Critique: For a theoretical framework on how bourgeois aesthetics constrains depictions of mass political action.
• WSWS Arts Reviews on Les Misérables, Judas and the Black Messiah, Bloody Sunday: Parallel analyses of how liberal filmmaking oscillates between sympathy for the oppressed and fear of their independent action.

On Robin Hood Mythmaking

• J.C. Holt, Robin Hood: The definitive scholarly study of the outlaw myth, useful for understanding why Hollywood prefers Robin Hood’s individualised rebellion to the collective politics of 1381.
• Stephen Knight, Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography. Explores how the legend has been repeatedly reshaped to fit bourgeois ideological needs.