An heated debate recently spread widely across online platforms, after a user posed a query to women: which would you prefer be lost in the woods alongside a male or a bear? Similar to the most engaging thought experiments, 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 about it extensively. There was also the predictable follow-up where men of a certain stripe took to the internet to tell women how foolish they had been to select the bear and went on to describe the punishments they deserved for that choice. This at minimum enabled those females who had been hesitating over their choice to decide with renewed assurance.
Portraying the Setup
To Cook a Bear effectively brings to life this nifty little setup. This six-episode series is based on Swedish author Mikael Niemi’s 2018 book with the identical title (rendered in 2020 for an English audience). It traces the struggles of a clergyman (the lead actor) and his household as they come to start a new ministry within Kengis, an isolated village in northern Sweden, during the mid-19th century. In a place lacking many joys, none of the inhabitants particularly warm to his strict approach to drinking and dancing, yet it is his protection of impoverished people – especially the indigenous Sami, from among whom comes the preacher’s adopted son Jussi (the young actor) – and his conviction in social justice and equality that sets him in direct opposition with the Kengis powers that be.
The Opposing Forces
Quickly collaborating opposing him include the sheriff the sheriff Brahe (the performer), the intimidating mill owner the matron Sjödahl (Pernilla August), seen initially dismissing a recently mangled laborer with minimal compensation as he remains gibbering upon seeing his crushed hand, and anyone else who profit from a community who can be bought for a few bottles of liquor provided by the unsettling shopkeeper the merchant Lindmark (the actor). Although, to be fair, Lindmark’s creepiness pales when travelling artist Beronius arrives on the scene (Simon J Berger, delivering an acting turn of exceptional discomfiting power). While they remain – like the pastor himself – just slightly beyond being stereotypes, they are at least potent archetypes.
Plot Progression
Once the foundations of tension sown, it is time to proceed with the storyline. The servant employed by the doctor, Hilda (Eleonoora Kauhanen), duly vanishes in the forest. Signs of her escape and animal scratches on a tree are found but she is nowhere to be seen. Gossip and fears regarding a human-devouring bear prowling the woodland spread, yet the clergyman holds a different view which he and his ward embark to verify.
A Strange Creation
To Cook a Bear is a slightly odd beast. It conjures a fine sense of the desolation that allows distrust and bias and grim legends flourish based on local folklore that animals can be controlled or inhabited by the spirits of humans. It avoids idealising the tough existence led by the villagers, where brutality, whether that of the wild or people, lurks constantly on the edges, poised to explode. But the characters seldom evolve beyond symbols – or maybe, as the struggles amid fairness and revenge, rationality and religion, good and evil intensify, emblematic figures within a moral tale – preventing the entire production truly coming to life.
Stylistic Shifts
Additionally, exist numerous stylistically clashing instances where the pastor’s ability in finding evidence and determine the maid’s destiny turns almost risible. He stands looking at broken milk pots and clumps of hair within storage sheds like a combined Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes – alongside Jussi a rather hapless assistant figure (none of whom had to taste a mixture of blood spatter and the boss’s spit to confirm that, yes, it was clearly dried blood on the site), before announcing his latest deduction and pulling a body out of a swamp.
Clashing Agendas
The village elite are bent on proving that Hilda was killed by an animal, maybe to preserve the calm, perhaps to shield a fellow elite. The pastor is bent on establishing the opposite, and the evidence so quickly accumulates in his favour that again the drama’s plausibility and audience tolerance get strained. At its best, To Cook a Bear is reminiscent of the adaptation a few years ago of the author’s The Essex Serpent, with its evocation of the opposing allures and fears presented by science and belief. In its low points, it’s more like a bear-themed police procedural. Still, it does seem to offer the response to the earlier query: “Females, choose the animal.”
To Cook a Bear is on Disney+ now.
