An intense debate lately spread widely on social media, following a user posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever small premise. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with 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, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
