A intense debate recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which some males took to the internet to inform women how foolish they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the locals particularly appreciate his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Quickly in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a newly injured laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who benefit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, where violence, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (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 at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and terrors offered by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
