An heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, after a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which violence, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
