A heated discussion lately went viral on social media, after a user asked a query for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led 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, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
