A intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone posed a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the predictable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
