A heated discussion recently went viral on social media, following a user posed a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they were to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, be it from the wild or people, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
