An heated discussion recently went viral on social media, following a user posed the question for females: would you rather find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it revealed wildly different perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how stupid they were to select the animal and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – particularly the native Sami population, from which comes the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots opposing him include the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, it is time to get down with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring beast roaming the woods circulate, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly peculiar show. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and faith, good and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was clearly dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
