A intense discussion recently went viral on social media, after a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to inform women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
