A intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where some males came online to inform women how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
