A intense discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, following a user posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms among genders, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering about it extensively. There was also the predictable coda in which some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they were for choosing the animal and went on to limn the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part series is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered in 2020 for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his defense of the poor – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the pastor’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that places him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Soon in cahoots against him include the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a populace easily swayed for a few bottles of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist the artist Beronius appears in the story (the performer, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they still serve as effective ones.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of tension sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, the character Hilda (the actress), accordingly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling 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 slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that bears can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, where brutality, be it from the wild or people, lurks constantly at the periphery, poised to explode. But the characters rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, while the conflicts amid fairness and vengeance, rationality and religion, good and evil escalate, emblematic figures within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist the many stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that indeed, it was clearly coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and extracting a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on proving that the maid met her end by an animal, maybe to protect the calm, or possibly to shield one of their own. The pastor is bent on proving otherwise, and the proof so rapidly stacks up in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing allures and terrors offered by science and belief. In its low points, it resembles a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
The series streams on Disney+ currently.
