An heated debate recently went viral across online platforms, after a user posed a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform females how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the locals especially appreciate his strict approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
