An heated discussion lately went viral on social media, following a user posed the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda where men of a certain stripe came online to tell women how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to limn the consequences they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. The six-part series is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his puritanical stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially firing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing moments in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
