An heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, after a user posed the question for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors 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 that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
