An heated debate recently spread widely on social media, after a user asked a query for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where some males came online to inform females how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from nature or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and religion, good and wickedness escalate, representative characters in a fable – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
