A heated discussion recently spread widely across online platforms, after someone asked a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and could easily cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. There was also the predictable coda where some males came online to tell women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and went on to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least enabled the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry in Kengis, an isolated village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the locals particularly warm to his strict stance on alcohol and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the native Sami population, from which hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots opposing him include the lawman Brahe (the performer), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and all others who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter Beronius appears on the scene (Simon J Berger, providing a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
With the seeds of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant from the doctor’s house, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing from the woods. Indications of her flight and bear markings upon a trunk are found yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating bear roaming the woods circulate, yet the clergyman has another theory which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. And it doesn’t romanticise the tough existence led by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from nature or people, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, rationality and faith, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns almost risible. He positions himself looking at shattered containers and strands of fur in hay barns like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to lick a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his newest conclusion and extracting a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The village elite are bent on demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, maybe to preserve the peace, perhaps to shield one of their own. The clergyman is bent on establishing the opposite, and the proof so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of Sarah Perry’s the serpent tale, with its evocation of the opposing attractions 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 provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
