A intense debate lately went viral on social media, after someone asked the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought about it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where some males came online to inform females how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect 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 the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
