A heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, after a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in a forest alongside a male or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed vastly opposing worldviews and life encounters, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to inform women how stupid they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively dramatises this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (translated two years later for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to begin a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place with few pleasures, not one of the locals especially warm to his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equal rights that places him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots against him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a recently mangled worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, but the pastor holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of nature or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and faith, good and evil intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are numerous tonally jarring moments in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely dried blood on the site), prior to declaring his latest deduction and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. In its finest moments, the series evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears presented by rational thought and religion. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to provide the response to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
