An heated debate lately went viral on social media, after a user posed a query for females: would you rather 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 chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
