On Tuesday, October 21, festival organizers announced the first wave of SXSW Film programming, which includes Mark Duplass as a 2015 keynote speaker, a Shakespearean workshop from actor Alfred Molina and a featured session with director Shekhar Kapur.
Duplass is an independent filmmaker best known for his work on Safety Not Guaranteed, The Puffy Chair and The One I Love, as well as his role as Pete Eckhart on the FX series The League. No stranger to Austin, Duplass has previously made several appearances at SXSW and the Austin Film Festival in support of his projects. The prolific filmmaker was just here in 2014 for the premiere of Creep, a horror comedy that he stars in and co-wrote with director Patrick Brice.
In addition to the keynote announcement, SXSW also released details about some of the panels for 2015, including a behind-the-scenes look at Pixar we predict will be pretty popular. Other interesting panels include an emotive look at movie audio tracks with Skywalker Sound and a panel that analyzes the overall success of indie films.
This latest announcement follows on the tails of last week's release of the 2015 Convergence Programming. For a full list of the SXSW Film panels, meet-ups and mentors announced so far, visit the SXSW website. The SXSW 2015 Film Conference will run from March 13 until March 21. Convergence Programming occurs throughout the entire duration of the festival on March 13 through March 22.
Writer and director Paul Greengrass made his name with a cinéma vérité style of filmmaking that brought immediacy and depth to three Jason Bourne films, United 93, Captain Phillips, and more. In The Uprising, he uses those skills to tell the story of the so-called Peasants’ Revolt in 14th century England.
Greengrass wastes no time starting the main plot as Ploughman (Andrew Garfield) and his fellow villagers object to onerous taxes put on them by the country’s nobility, led by the young King Richard II (Woody Norman), to fund an ongoing war. Ploughman initiates a violent response over the tone-deaf — and unseemly — way the king’s guard go about their business, and the rebellion soon starts to spread across the countryside, with the citizens looking for a degree of autonomy.
The ever-expanding group makes their way toward London to try to make their case to the king himself. Meanwhile, the king’s top advisors, including Archbishop Sudbury (Stephen Dillane) and Treasurer Hales (Tom Hollander), try to usurp power from the inexperienced monarch even as the king’s mother (Katherine Waterston) tries to get him to be more assertive.
The history of the English monarchy is long and lurid, as Shakespeare detailed in multiple plays, including Richard II. Though the events in the film took place almost 650 years ago, it’s easy to see parallels between what the peasants were fighting for and modern-day politics. Greengrass’ storytelling intent is solid, and the righteous anger the citizens feel is initially relatable and palpable.
But the populism theme of the story soon gets bogged down in drudgery and minutiae that is difficult to understand, especially when the details are lost in the thick regional English accents. The leaders of the rebels — including John Ball (Jamie Bell), Wat Tyler (Cosmo Jarvis), and Alyce (Thomasin McKenzie) — are shown doing a lot of planning, but the strong feelings they have about their quest don’t come across well, leaving the audience as passive observers.
When there is action, Greengrass and his team employ a frenetic style that is not great for comprehension. While the gist of what is happening and what side is winning is legible, individual moments go by so quickly so as to be nearly meaningless. Save for Ploughman, any connection that has been made with various characters proves futile, as Greengrass doesn’t seem to have any time for emotion. Scenes that should feel thrilling or heartbreaking instead come off as empty.
Garfield is a two-time Oscar nominee who has done great work across multiple genres. He’s fine in this role, but whether it’s the story, the filmmaking, or something else, he’s not as captivating as usual. The same goes for other strong actors like Bell, McKenzie, Dillane, Hollander, and Waterston, who each seem to be giving their all to their performances but are somehow muted in the process.
Done right, The Uprising could have been a rip-roaring account of people standing up against their oppressors. What Greengrass has made, though, is a film that can’t translate its medieval story for a modern audience and concentrates too much on unexciting elements and too little on thrilling ones.
