A heated discussion lately went viral on social media, following a user posed the question to women: would you rather be lost in the woods with a man or with a bear? Like all the most engaging thought experiments, it revealed vastly opposing worldviews and experiences, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely cause an existential crisis for anyone pondering about it for too long. There was also the predictable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe took to the internet to inform women how stupid they were for choosing the animal and proceeded to limn the punishments they merited for it. This at least allowed those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with a new confidence.
Dramatising the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part drama is based from Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for English readers). It follows the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family as they come to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, a remote settlement in northern Sweden, in 1852. In a place with few pleasures, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his strict approach to drinking and revelry, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Soon collaborating opposing him are the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen early on firing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness diminishes when itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict planted, it is time to get down to narrative business. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (the actress), duly goes missing in the forest. Indications of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows suspicion and bias and dark myths thrive based on local folklore that bears can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the hardscrabble life led by the villagers, in which violence, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become beyond symbols – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and vengeance, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
Additionally, exist the many tonally jarring instances where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood droplets and the boss’s spit to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body from a bog.
Clashing Agendas
The local leaders are determined proving that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence 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 evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and religion. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it appears to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ currently.
