A heated discussion lately spread widely on social media, after someone posed a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or with a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they were to select the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for it. This at minimum enabled the women who were uncertain about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. The six-part drama is based on Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 novel with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly appreciate his strict stance on drinking and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the pastor’s adopted son the youth Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor sold by the creepy store owner the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that lets distrust and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, be it from the wild or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the whole thing fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, there are the many stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and discern the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, maybe to protect the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so quickly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and terrors offered by science and religion. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
