An intense discussion recently went viral on social media, after someone posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they had been to select the bear 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 a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
