An heated debate lately went viral on social media, following someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled 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 adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where violence, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
