A intense discussion recently went viral on social media, after a user posed a query for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable follow-up where some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the bear and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the competing allures and terrors 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 that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
