An heated discussion lately spread widely on social media, following a user posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males came online to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
