A intense discussion lately went viral across online platforms, following someone posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where some males came online to tell women how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate 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), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
