A intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been to select the bear and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors presented by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
