A intense discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences 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 Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
