A intense debate recently went viral on social media, following a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled 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 series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated 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 the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
