An heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
