A heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone posed the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, illuminated chasms among genders, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to begin a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating against him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The maid from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and anxieties of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woodland circulate, but the pastor has another theory which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets distrust and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the souls of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and evil escalate, emblematic figures in a fable – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances in which the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
