A intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory 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 dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where violence, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. 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 were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
