A intense debate recently went viral on social media, after a user posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, 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 in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family 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 with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
