A heated debate lately spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted divides between the sexes, and could easily to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where some males came online to tell women how foolish they were for choosing the bear and proceeded to describe the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered two years later for English readers). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom hails the pastor’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 collaborating against him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (the actress), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation while he is still babbling at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to prove.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat 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 can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the residents, where violence, whether that of nature or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – preventing the entire production truly becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many tonally jarring moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that again the show’s credibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the competing allures and fears presented by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
