An intense discussion recently went viral across online platforms, after a user asked a query for females: which would you prefer be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the locals especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension planted, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist numerous tonally jarring moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined proving that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the show’s credibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it appears to provide the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
