An heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following someone posed a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to tell females how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and went on 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 effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
