An intense discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to inform women how stupid they were to select the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots against him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Rumours 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
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands observing shattered containers 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 taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors offered by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
