An heated discussion recently went viral across online platforms, following a user asked a query for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda where some males came online to inform females how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
