An intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence 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 evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
