A intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, following someone posed a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to tell females how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
