An heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked a query to women: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to inform women how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
