An heated discussion lately went viral on social media, after someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up where some males took to the internet to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever small premise. The six-part drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are determined proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
