{"id":52496,"date":"2026-09-08T09:56:48","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T13:56:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/?p=52496"},"modified":"2026-09-08T09:56:48","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T13:56:48","slug":"greengrass-and-garfield-talk-justice-faith-god-and-the-uprising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2026\/09\/greengrass-and-garfield-talk-justice-faith-god-and-the-uprising.html","title":{"rendered":"Greengrass and Garfield Talk Justice, Faith, God, and ‘The Uprising’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Focus Features \/ YouTube<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“God was the source of justice, but mankind was the source of injustice.”<\/p>\n

Andrew Garfield (“The Amazing Spider-Man<\/a>,” “Hacksaw Ridge<\/a>“) and director Paul Greengrass (“The Bourne series<\/a>,” “Captain Phillips<\/a>“) explore justice, suffering and spiritual rebirth in “The Uprising<\/a>,” a sweeping historical drama set amid England’s 1381 revolt that reaches for enduring truths about human dignity and divine justice.<\/p>\n

Set against the devastation of the Plague and an oppressive tax scheme targeting England’s poorest communities, the story follows the Ploughman (Garfield), a farmer whose grief and moral awakening spark a movement. When he intervenes in a violent assault by tax collectors, discontent ignites into a mass uprising that surges toward London. As tens of thousands demand justice and freedom, the young King Richard II faces a defining choice: align with entrenched power or stand with his people.<\/p>\n

I asked Greengrass whether the idea that one person prompting for justice can spark a whole movement still feels timely.<\/p>\n

“I would say it’s both timeless and timely,” he said. “Everyone in that world felt that the world that they inhabited was deeply unfair and rigged against them, and so they felt inside a feeling of building rage.”<\/p>\n

He frames that tension in spiritual terms\u2014a just God contrasted with the injustice people create.<\/p>\n

“Their belief was, and their understanding was that God was the source of justice, but mankind was the source of injustice,” he said. “When Ploughman throws down and says we’ve had enough, things must change.”<\/p>\n

“The Uprising,” shown in the grounded, realistic method Greengrass is known for, opens with the Ploughman laboring alone, haunted by loss. At the same time, the king and those who surround him tighten their grip on a faltering kingdom by pushing a brutal levy on the poor. As the countryside seethes, the spark of one intervention becomes the birth of courage. Within days, the march on London remakes the nation’s landscape.<\/p>\n

Greengrass says the narrative’s spiritual core lies in the conviction that God’s justice means grace, goodness and our “better selves,” a counter-witness to the world’s cruelties.<\/p>\n

“In the end, whichever God you worship, whatever your conception of God is, God ultimately has to mean justice and grace and goodness and our better selves,” he said. “We can all look at the world and see elements of the world that are plainly unjust.”<\/p>\n

Garfield, whose career has touched on spiritual themes before \u2014 from the deep faith questions of “Silence” to the sacrificial, innocent courage of “Hacksaw Ridge” \u2014 finds in the Ploughman a spiritual parallel of loss and renewal.<\/p>\n

“I really, really wanted to do it in a very, very deep and mysterious way. I felt very called to it,” he said. “There’s something about the transformation that happens for him, which feels very personal and almost like a death and a rebirth. That he, in losing everything, kind of finds everything.”<\/p>\n

The actor then describes the role as a self-offering journey that mirrors a spiritual pilgrimage.<\/p>\n

“I feel like that’s a deeply ‘crucifixed’ spiritual story, a self-sacrificing story that hopefully we’re all living in some way day in day out,” he said. “Our old self is dying for a new self to be born. There’s something very beautiful about that. Painful, deeply painful, and full of grief and loss.”<\/p>\n

The Ploughman, he says, felt “a deep connection to himself, to his fellow brothers and sisters, to the struggle for justice, to God” takes root. He calls the transformation a “birthright of dignity, a birthright of justice.”<\/p>\n