A intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, following someone posed the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote 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 drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward 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 prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
