A heated debate lately went viral on social media, following a user asked the question to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and went on to describe the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland 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 odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds 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 agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
