An intense debate recently spread widely on social media, after a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis if you thought about it for too long. There was also the predictable coda where some males came online to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama 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 start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, good and wickedness intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, the series is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
