A intense debate lately spread widely on social media, following a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, where brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing 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, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
