A heated discussion lately spread widely on social media, after a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
