A heated debate recently went viral on social media, following someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they had been to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives in the story (the performer, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist numerous tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ now.
