An intense discussion recently spread widely on social media, after a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
