An intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, following someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about 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 animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the residents, where brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate 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 newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again 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 Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
