A intense debate lately spread widely on social media, after a user posed the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform females how stupid they had been to select the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is adapted from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him are the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
