A intense debate lately spread widely across online platforms, after a user posed a query for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
