A intense debate lately went viral across online platforms, after a user posed a query to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they were for choosing the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part series is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’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 household as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the locals particularly appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s foster child 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 Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick 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 latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears offered by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
