Andrew Garfield on the Spiritual Power and Peril of Rage

A humble ploughman walks across the countryside with a radical preacher and a former nun, with thousands of livid farmers and laborers following behind them. Together, the three travelers ponder the reason for the recent pandemic that swept across the land and killed half of the people they’ve ever known.

“The sickness was [God’s] punishment for the crimes of the rich,” remarks the preacher, John Ball, rather matter-of-factly.

“So why do we suffer also?” asks the ploughman.

“To show us the truth, and fill us with rage. Surrender to it, and it will set you free,” Ball replies.

It’s a confronting moment in The Uprising, and one that I didn’t altogether know how to discern. Instinctually, I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for wilderness preachers talking about the sins of the rich—Jesus was one of them. But Jesus never talked about rage (or violence) with quite so much enthusiasm.

“How do we change, you know? I mean, how does a systemic change happen?” Andrew Garfield muses during our conversation about the film. It’s a potent question for our moment. We’re simultaneously living in a moment of intense change in the world and a palpable sense of helplessness on the part of ordinary people: Data centers and Flock cameras seem to be springing up like weeds in all the major cities; the average global temperature keeps climbing while our environmental protections dwindle; our data and privacy are pillaged as a matter of course; and the richest 1% hold an ever-growing percentage of the world’s wealth. What do people do when they feel their free will is boxed into a corner, and their tangible futures are at the mercy of a few powerful and self-serving tyrants?

The Uprising paints a picture of one answer, from an earlier era. Chronicling the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, the film picks up during a period when England was reeling from the ongoing Hundred Years’ War and the aftermath of the devastating Black Death. The period was marked by economic instability, severe labor shortages, and growing tensions between peasants and landowners, as the crown imposed increasingly burdensome taxes to finance the war. Garfield’s character, an enigmatic man who identifies himself only as “the ploughman,” is still mourning the death of his entire family when he unwittingly sets in motion the events that will lead to a mass uprising across the country. The results are altogether messy, violent, tragic, and (if the film’s somewhat ahistorical marketing angle is to be believed) help form the basis for the legend and spirit of Robin Hood.

Andrew Garfield has carved out quite the niche for himself in the last decade, starring in numerous stories that have explored religious faith and profound existential questions about human life and culture. Whether portraying a Christian conscientious objector in Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge, a doubting Jesuit priest in Martin Scorsese’s Silence, or the prominent (and corrupt) televangelist Jim Bakker in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Garfield has certainly immersed himself in religious roles enough to have unique perspective and insight.

READ: Jessica Chastain Has Wanted to Portray Tammy Faye for Years

Last week, I was grateful to have a short-but-substantial conversation with Garfield about the themes of The Uprising and where he sees them playing out both in history and culture today. Perhaps change is rarely as picturesque or black-and-white as we want to imagine—but we must learn to act justly and love mercy all the same.

The Uprising is in theaters on September 10th.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Georgia Coley, Sojourners: This film is very much about bravery and righteous protest, but I also really appreciated that it felt a lot thornier than that, too. On the one hand it could easily be viewed as a social justice parable about working people rising up against oppression. But then, on the other hand, there are those moments in there where they’re burning down these institutions that almost feel like the storming of a capitol, and there’s a lot of mob justice and vengefulness. How do you make sense of that dichotomy in the film? And how does your character make sense of it?

Andrew Garfield: Yeah, I think it’s just reality. I’ve been on plenty of protests with plenty of people who are championing causes that are completely aligned with me, and then you have little factions that will hitch their wagon or join in with a cause that feels completely unrelated . . . And then there are groups who believe in violence, groups who believe in nonviolence. So I think it’s just real, in the sense of what it takes. Once there’s more than however many people assembled, there’s gonna be disagreements and there’s gonna be different ways of proceeding.

And how do we change, you know? I mean, how does a systemic change happen? . . . I was talking to a much smarter person than me about it, and he was saying that the world currently doesn’t have a center. The center is falling apart. The world and the structures are just being dismantled, dissipating, and dissolving. The world is dying, but not in an ultimate way. It’s a death before a rebirth. And this is what’s happened over and over and over again. It’s not like the Renaissance was just a bunch of guys getting together [and saying], “Should we do a Renaissance?” It was a bunch of individuals feeling a lack of center in the world, and finding a center in themselves, and creating a whole new way of perceiving and living, and bringing that very personal center to the center of the culture, while a bunch of other people were doing the same thing.

I find hope in the idea that each of us as individuals can find that change within ourselves—can find that true core of humanity and soul, and style, and deep self, to bring to the center of the culture. And if enough of us do that, then enough seeds will be planted to grow a world that maybe is a bit better than the last one.

“The world is dying, but not in an ultimate way. It’s a death before a rebirth.” -Andrew Garfield

Yeah, there’s some aspect of it that’s recognizing that you’re living in the middle of a story.

Yeah, I think we’re in the part of the story where everything’s falling apart. We are in the part of the story where it’s kind of dark, the darkness around us is deep, and it’s Nero fiddling on the roof . . . it’s end of empire stuff. It’s scary, and it’s uncertain, and it’s full of anxiety, and it’s full of fear, and it’s full of a kind of unknown destination. And it’s the setup. It’s just the way it is right now. So, what I hope for myself and for everyone is that we respond honestly, within ourselves, so that we can make a new world in an image that feels true. In an image that does bring soul back into a hungry, hungry world.

You talked about soul. There’s another interesting duality in the film: On the one hand, you’ve got the preacher, John Ball, who is evoking people’s spiritual imaginations to help them think about a better and more just world. But on the other hand, some aspect of that faith also leads to a certain downfall. What do you make of that complexity and what role do you think religion and faith and the stories that we tell through them play in shaping movements that stand up against these corrupt systems?

Yeah, it’s so interesting. John Ball, obviously, is a very controversial figure. In the film, which Jamie [Bell] does brilliantly, you’re able to question his motives as a flawed human being, and whether it’s purely a kind of a spiritual retribution that he’s after, or whether it’s something more personal or egocentric. That’s something that the ploughman obviously tries to hold a mirror up to and tries to reckon with.

To get into how Christianity was failing people at the time, I think … it is connected to the Robin Hood story. It is connected to the Christian church destroying an indigeneity that people felt to the land of the British Isles that has been long buried. That was a kind of paganism, that was a connection to nature, [an] accordance with nature. I think the form of Christianity that was introduced and people were indoctrinated with, was very, very dispossessing, was very, very disempowering, was very, very hierarchical. And was a tool of oppression, and a tool of destroying a historical, embodied connection to the land, and to nature, and to the soul, actually. And suddenly, the majority of people who were working the land [were] working at the behest of the one percent of that time. [Everyone] suddenly felt a punishment, and everything was framed as such: the Black Death, the plague, was framed as this, “Well, you’re not living right in God’s eyes.” God was being used as a weapon—was being manipulated and used for evil, as far as I can see.

So, what I find interesting about the story and about this particular period is the re-emergence of a kind of Robin Hood, archetypal, green man, kind of energy. That is indigenous to the British Isles. That is indigenous to that land. There’s a slow-emergent reclaiming of a true spirituality, true ecologically centered spirituality, which does include a connection to animal life, plant life, and one’s own animal nature.

And the role of violence is a really, really interesting question amidst revolution, and amidst change. A butterfly can’t become a butterfly without resistance within the cocoon. The only way that a caterpillar can have the strength in their wings, ultimately as they emerge, is if there is this resistant force within that kind of cocoon of transformation, so that they have enough wingspan and wing strength to be able to fly directly afterwards. If it was easy, there would be no butterflies. I find that quite a cool metaphor to think of too.

You’ve played a range of several characters, including this one, who have been believers in a higher power in some way. I think in some of those characters, that leads to really selfless, beautiful things. And in other characters, it leads to more destructive and self-serving things. Have you felt any distinction between when it leads one way and when it leads the other?

Yeah, it’s usually when power gets involved. Jim Bakker being one of the people [whose] unresolved issues start governing the train. It’s a lack of reckoning with one’s core wounds, actually. Jim Bakker never really, from my understanding, dealt with his own woundedness. So his woundedness was then being enacted on people around him, and the culture at large. And it manifested in all these different ways. So I think if we’re not engaging with our woundedness, then we’re not to be trusted with power.