A heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
