An intense debate recently went viral across online platforms, after someone asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode series is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
