A heated discussion lately went viral on social media, after someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it extensively. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males came online to tell women how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
