A intense discussion lately went viral across online platforms, following a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which violence, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
