An intense debate recently went viral across online platforms, following someone asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets distrust and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
