Revolutionary Propaganda Masquerades as Medieval Catholic Drama in ‘The Uprising’
The National Catholic Register portal reports on the film The Uprising, directed by Paul Greengrass and starring Andrew Garfield, which dramatizes the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 in England. The article highlights the film’s Catholic imagery — a Corpus Christi procession, the preaching of John Ball, royal confession — only to depict the Blessed Sacrament profaned in the dirt as the catalyst for violent insurrection. Garfield describes his character’s “soul awakening” to “human dignity” and “human rights,” while Greengrass explicitly parallels the medieval revolt with the COVID-19 pandemic and modern “oligarchy.” The Register presents this R-rated spectacle of mob violence as an exploration of the “Catholic heart.” This is not a Catholic film but a revolutionary manifesto draped in liturgical vestments, weaponizing the Sacred Species to sanctify insurrection against God-ordained authority.