A intense discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, after a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
