An intense discussion lately went viral on social media, after a user posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where some males took to the internet to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part series is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. 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, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
