An intense discussion lately went viral across online platforms, following a user asked the question to women: would you rather find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with minimal compensation while he is still gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that lets suspicion and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil escalate, representative characters within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and religion. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
