An heated discussion lately spread widely on social media, following a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how stupid they had been to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, where violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing 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 offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
