An intense debate recently went viral on social media, following a user asked a query for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they were to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later 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, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing 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 with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and terrors offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
