An heated debate lately went viral on social media, after a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior 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 village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears 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 that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
