An heated debate lately went viral across online platforms, following a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to tell females how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to limn 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 Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family 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 warm to his strict approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors presented by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
