An intense discussion lately went viral across online platforms, following a user posed the question for females: would you rather be lost in a forest with a man or with a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and life encounters, highlighted chasms between the sexes, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it extensively. Additionally, there came the predictable follow-up in which some males came online to tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and proceeded to limn the consequences they merited for that choice. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his family as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated settlement in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, not one of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict stance on alcohol and revelry, yet it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from among whom comes the pastor’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace who can be bought with some containers of liquor sold by the unsettling store owner Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes once itinerant painter Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, providing a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her escape and bear markings on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and dark myths flourish based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids romanticise the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from the wild or people, always looms at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, while the conflicts between justice and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the whole thing fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring moments where the clergyman’s skill to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are determined demonstrating that Hilda met her end by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, or possibly to protect one of their own. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and fears offered by rational thought and belief. At its worst, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it does seem to offer the response to that debated question: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
