A heated discussion lately spread widely on social media, after someone asked the question for females: which would you prefer find yourself stranded in a forest alongside a male or a bear? Like all the best thought experiments, it exposed wildly different worldviews and experiences, illuminated divides between the sexes, and was likely cause a deep personal dilemma for anyone pondering on it extensively. Additionally, there came the almost inevitable follow-up in which some males took to the internet to tell females how stupid they had been for choosing the bear and went on to describe the punishments they merited for that choice. This at least enabled those females who were uncertain over their choice to make it with a new confidence.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear skillfully dramatises this nifty small premise. The six-part series is adapted from Scandinavian writer the novelist’s 2018 novel of the same name (translated in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the tribulations of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his family when they arrive to start a fresh religious post in Kengis, an isolated settlement in Sweden’s north, during the mid-19th century. Within a community lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly appreciate his puritanical approach to drinking and dancing, but it is his protection of the poor – particularly the indigenous Sami, from among whom hails the preacher’s foster child the youth Jussi (the young actor) – and his belief in social justice and equal rights that sets him on a collision course with the Kengis local authorities.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating against him include the lawman Brahe (Magnus Krepper), the fearsome factory proprietor the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), observed early on dismissing a recently mangled laborer with a month’s pay as he remains gibbering upon seeing of his pulped hand, and anyone else who profit from a populace easily swayed with some containers of the whisky sold by the creepy shopkeeper Lindmark (Jonas Karlsson). However, in fairness, Lindmark’s eeriness diminishes once itinerant painter the artist Beronius appears on the scene (the performer, delivering an acting turn of rare discomfiting power). If they are – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least effective ones.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of conflict planted, the moment arrives to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, the character Hilda (the actress), duly vanishes in the forest. Indications of her flight and bear markings on a tree get discovered yet she remains nowhere to be seen. Rumours and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woods circulate, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward set out to verify.
An Odd Beast
This Bear Drama is a somewhat odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the bleakness that lets distrust and prejudice and grim legends thrive from the native legend that animals can be controlled or possessed by the spirits of men. It avoids idealising the hardscrabble life experienced by the villagers, in which brutality, whether that of the wild or mankind, always looms on the edges, poised to explode. Yet the personas rarely become more than ciphers – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, logic and religion, virtue and wickedness intensify, representative characters within a moral tale – which stops the entire production fully coming to life.
Tonal Inconsistencies
And then, exist the many stylistically clashing instances in which the clergyman’s skill in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny becomes almost risible. He positions himself observing shattered containers and clumps of hair in hay barns as a fusion of Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – with Jussi a particularly unfortunate Hastings-cum-Watson (none of whom were required to taste a blend of blood spatter and saliva from his superior to confirm that indeed, it was definitely coagulated blood at the crime scene), prior to declaring his latest deduction 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 protect the peace, perhaps to protect one of their own. The clergyman is intent on establishing otherwise, and the proof so rapidly accumulates in his favour that once more the drama’s plausibility and the viewer’s patience get strained. At its best, the series evokes memories of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s the serpent tale, through its portrayal of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like Law & Order: Special Ursine Unit. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide the answer to the earlier query: “Ladies, take the bear.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
