A intense discussion lately spread widely on social media, after a user asked the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
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 minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped 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, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
