An intense debate lately went viral on social media, after someone asked the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever small premise. 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 pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat peculiar show. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
