A heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, following a user posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
