A intense debate lately spread widely on social media, following someone posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males came online to inform women how stupid they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
