An heated discussion recently went viral on social media, following a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. There was also the predictable coda in which some males came online to tell females how foolish they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where violence, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
The series is on Disney+ currently.
