An heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following someone posed the question for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, 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 predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
