A intense debate lately went viral on social media, following someone asked the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily cause an existential crisis if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they were to select the bear and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at least enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part series is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his puritanical stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood on the site), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the show’s credibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and terrors offered by rational thought and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
