An intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, following a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair 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 mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
