The Bold and Bloody True Story Behind ‘The Uprising’

To prepare, Garfield began with the rhythms Ploughman would know. “It’s a man that lives in a very, very different time and in a very, very different rhythm to me,” he says. “Connection to the earth and connection to nature, that felt very, very important.” He researched the seasons, harvests, clothing, daily labor, and the habits of the ox. Before filming, he spent time in Ploughman’s hut with the animal, learning the terms of a household in which the ox slept indoors through winter to provide warmth. “Connection to his ox, that was the primary relationship in the story,” Garfield says. The animal is at once Ploughman’s companion, source of heat, and fellow laborer.

His wife and children are dead before the film begins, but Garfield imagined the life Ploughman lost so he could carry that grief across the film. He developed their history and their absence until they became, as he puts it, the “kind of invisible visible spirit characters that are there throughout the story.” Their absence helps explain why the character continues to seek justice, even after the uprising begins to lose its way. “They are the characters that are drawing him forward throughout the action of the film,” Garfield says.