An heated discussion lately spread widely on social media, following a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to inform females how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. The six-part 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 struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
