A heated debate recently went viral on social media, following someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda where some males came online to tell females how stupid they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the consequences they deserved 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 effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight 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 shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
