A intense discussion lately went viral across online platforms, after someone asked a query for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in the woods with a man or with a bear? Similar to the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, illuminated chasms between the sexes, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma if you thought on it for too long. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which men of a certain stripe came online to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the bear and went on to limn the consequences they merited for it. This at least allowed those females who were uncertain about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully brings to life this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is based on Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the struggles of a pastor (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household when they arrive to start a new ministry within Kengis, a remote settlement in Sweden’s north, in 1852. Within a community with few pleasures, not one of the inhabitants particularly warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his defense of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from which comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his belief in social justice and equality that places him in direct opposition against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him are the lawman the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor Madam Sjödahl (the actress), observed early on firing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight his crushed hand, and anyone else who benefit from a community easily swayed with some containers of liquor provided by the unsettling store owner the merchant Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist the artist Beronius arrives in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare unsettling intensity). If they are – like the pastor himself – only a little more than caricatures, they still serve as potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The maid employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), accordingly vanishes from the woods. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to prove.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a somewhat odd beast. It creates a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and prejudice and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of nature or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. But the characters seldom evolve more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully becoming immersive.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing moments where the pastor’s ability to discover clues and determine the maid’s destiny becomes nearly laughable. He stands looking at broken milk pots and strands of fur in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to lick a blend of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and pulling a body from a bog.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on proving that Hilda met her end by a bear, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to shield a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that once more the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance are tested. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears presented by rational thought and belief. In its low points, it resembles Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Still, it appears to provide the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
