A intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after a user asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to tell females how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
