A heated discussion recently went viral on social media, after a user asked a query to women: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest with a man or a bear? Similar to the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different perspectives and life encounters, highlighted chasms among genders, and was likely to induce an existential crisis for anyone pondering on it for too long. There was also the almost inevitable coda where some males took to the internet to inform women how foolish they had been for choosing the animal and proceeded to describe the consequences they merited for it. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Scenario
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this clever little setup. This six-episode drama is adapted from Scandinavian writer Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book of the same name (rendered two years later for an English audience). It follows the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive 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 locals particularly warm to his puritanical approach to alcohol and revelry, but it is his protection of impoverished people – particularly the native Sami population, from among whom comes the preacher’s foster child Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that places him on a collision course against the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly in cahoots against him are the sheriff Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed initially dismissing a newly injured worker with a month’s pay while he is still babbling at the sight of his pulped hand, and all others who profit from a community easily swayed for a few bottles of liquor provided by the creepy shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s eeriness pales once itinerant painter the artist Beronius arrives on the scene (the performer, delivering a performance of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – similar to the clergyman – only a little more than caricatures, they are at least potent archetypes.
Narrative Development
With the seeds of conflict sown, the moment arrives to get down with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly goes missing in the forest. Signs of her escape and bear markings upon a trunk get discovered yet she remains completely absent. Gossip and fears of a man/maid-eating beast roaming the woodland spread, but the pastor has another theory that he and Jussi embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that lets suspicion and prejudice and grim legends flourish from the native legend that animals might be dominated or possessed by the spirits of humans. And it doesn’t idealising the tough existence led by the residents, in which brutality, be it from the wild or mankind, always looms at the periphery, waiting to erupt. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or perhaps, as the struggles between justice and revenge, logic and faith, good and wickedness intensify, emblematic figures in a fable – preventing the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, there are the many stylistically clashing moments in which the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and discern Hilda’s fate turns nearly laughable. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair within storage sheds as a fusion of Hercule Poirot the English sleuth – alongside Jussi a particularly unfortunate assistant figure (neither of whom were required to taste a mixture of blood droplets and saliva from his superior to agree that, yes, it was definitely dried blood at the crime scene), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a corpse out of a swamp.
Opposing Goals
The local leaders are determined demonstrating that Hilda was killed by a bear, perhaps to preserve the calm, perhaps to protect a fellow elite. The pastor is intent on proving the opposite, and the evidence so rapidly stacks up supporting his view that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. In its finest moments, To Cook a Bear evokes memories of the TV version some years back of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the competing attractions and fears presented by science and religion. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Nevertheless, it does seem to offer the answer to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear streams on Disney+ now.
