An intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after a user asked a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives 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 still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
