An intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, after a user posed the question for females: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to inform females how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
