A intense debate lately went viral on social media, following a user asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears offered 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 answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
