A heated discussion lately spread widely across online platforms, following someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and was likely to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable coda where some males came online to inform females how stupid they had been to select the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. This six-episode drama is based from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated two years later for English readers). It traces the tribulations of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote 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 stance on alcohol and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Antagonists
Soon collaborating against him include the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the fearsome mill owner Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay as he remains babbling upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness pales when itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more being stereotypes, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict sown, it is time to proceed to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Signs of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and anxieties regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a strong impression of the bleakness that allows suspicion and prejudice and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from the wild or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, there are the many tonally jarring instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of the Belgian detective and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a mixture of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that the maid was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. 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 competing attractions and fears presented by science and belief. At its worst, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the response to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ currently.
