A intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after a user posed a query to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature 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, good and wickedness escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to protect the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
