An intense debate recently spread widely on social media, following someone posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda where some males came online to inform females how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode series is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, where brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
