A intense debate lately went viral on social media, after a user posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides 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 where some males took to the internet to inform females how foolish they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating mill owner Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk get discovered but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and bias and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, perhaps to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
