A intense debate lately spread widely on social media, following a user posed the question for females: which would you prefer be lost in the woods with a man or a bear? Like all the most engaging hypothetical scenarios, it revealed vastly opposing perspectives and life encounters, highlighted divides among genders, and could easily to induce a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda in which men of a certain stripe came online to tell females how stupid they had been to select the animal and went on to describe the punishments they merited for it. This at least allowed the women who had been hesitating about their decision to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
The Bear-Cooking Tale effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. The six-part drama is based on Swedish author the novelist’s 2018 novel with the identical title (translated in 2020 for English readers). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (Gustaf Skarsgård) and his household as they come to start a fresh religious post within Kengis, a remote village in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants especially warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and dancing, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (Emil Karlsen) – and his conviction in societal fairness and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the intimidating factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (the actress), observed initially dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still gibbering at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a populace who can be bought for a few bottles of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales once travelling artist Beronius appears in the story (Simon J Berger, delivering a performance of rare discomfiting power). If they are – similar to the clergyman – just slightly beyond than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down to narrative business. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk are found but she is completely absent. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a slightly odd beast. It creates a strong impression of the bleakness that allows distrust and bias and grim legends thrive based on local folklore that bears might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids romanticise the tough existence experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, be it from the wild or people, always looms on the edges, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas seldom evolve more than ciphers – or maybe, while the conflicts amid fairness and revenge, logic and faith, virtue and evil intensify, representative characters in a fable – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
And then, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances where the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine Hilda’s fate becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing broken milk pots and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of the Belgian detective the English sleuth – with Jussi a rather hapless Hastings-cum-Watson (neither of whom had to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was clearly dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his newest conclusion and extracting a body out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are bent on demonstrating that the maid was killed by an animal, perhaps to preserve the peace, or possibly to protect a fellow elite. The clergyman is intent on proving otherwise, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience are tested. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation some years back of Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing attractions and fears offered by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it appears to offer the answer to that debated question: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
