A intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, after a user asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to inform females how stupid they had been to select the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ now.
