A intense discussion lately went viral on social media, after a user posed the question to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and experiences, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable coda in which some males came online to tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at minimum allowed the women who were uncertain about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of the poor – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Antagonists
Soon in cahoots opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes when itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Indications of her flight and animal scratches upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward set out to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, lurks constantly at the periphery, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, good and evil escalate, representative characters in a fable – preventing the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to agree that indeed, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by a bear, perhaps to protect the calm, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance 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, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles 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 streams on Disney+ currently.
