Agent of Happiness

Watched this at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.

Bhutan culture is rarely spoken from the media and all and this documentary is a charming, sweet, and interesting exploration about the happiness levels of Bhutan citizens with great conversations between the main peers, interesting cultural aspects explored and exploring the human self. Filmmakers Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbo are able to capture the true essence of the life of Bhutan lifestyles and provide some really fun, bittersweet and touching interviews, discussions and camerawork throughout.

Many of the discussions from the Bhutanese peers are interesting as discussions about their culture, struggles, and self were interesting to listen towards. Including singing, dancing, dialogues and all.

Being the first Sundance film for this festival, what a good start! I'd recommend it for those who are interested in Bhutan culture.

The structure of this documentary about life in Bhutan is decidedly odd and, in some ways, limits its impact. Even so, viewers anxious to get an impression of life in that country today will not be displeased by Agent of Happiness which is extremely well photographed by its two directors, Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó. Nevertheless, the approach taken by the filmmakers involves switching from one style to another and from one focus to another and results in a film that never fully comes together.

The film's title refers to its central figure, the 40-year-old but still unmarried Amber Kumar Gurung who devotedly looks after his aged mother (we learn that his siblings have all married). Despite this personal detail the film initially seems to be centred on his work. We learn that he is employed with a colleague, Guna Raj Kuikel, to travel around the country putting official questions to its citizens as part of a survey. In Bhutan great pride is taken in keeping up its reputation as a place of great happiness and these questions are regularly put, 148 of them altogether, in order to calculate an annual figure for the Gross National Happiness Index. Every interviewee is asked to react to each question by giving an evaluation up to ten. One example seen here concerns a village youth and his ratings written up on the screen are for the following: Sense of Anger/Number of Donkeys/Sense of Belonging/Level of Forgiveness/Sense of Satisfaction. The combined figure gives him a nine out of ten.

Watching Agent of Happiness, I was not sure if it's a satire because the happiness index calculation seems... so simple. I mean, the barometer of happiness, if it can exist, is so complex as there are far too many things to factor in. It was wonderful to see the interviews that the two lead characters take of people from different strata and the potshots at some people who are happy at the expense of others within their family. Maybe the moral is that if most things in your life are good enough, you'll be most likely be happy. Even if that takes into the account the number of cows you own or the latest iPhone. The lead guy is charming and I wish I could be as happy as he is in the film regardless of the sources of his sadness.

(Watched at the 2024 MAMI Mumbai Film Festival.)

GDP is a very limited metric for measuring the success of a country; nonetheless, one can consider Bhutan's attempts to quantify Gross National Happiness as frankly bizarre. But it serves as the vehicle for this charming film, following one of those charged with assessing this as he visits various of his countrymen and women, whose stories provide small vignettes of a unique society in many ways different from those of the contempory west, one in which family bonds remain very strong and mostly to positive effect. Ironically, his own happiness is impeded by the government he works for, which refuses to treat him as a citizen due to his Nepali heritage. There may be no paradise anywhere on this earth; but one is left with feeling for the Bhutanese making the best of what they have.

Extremely insightful piece on the various ways Bhutanese people approach happiness. Given the country's strong branding around the notion of "happiness" this documentary adds a surprisingly diverse account on the topic.

I partiuclarly loved how some of most important sentences come from "simple" "everyday" Bhutanese people, demonstarting that happiness might root in the spiritual rather than the material values. At the same time through the accounts of the participants, the film reflects on some of the most burning issues of the country (like emigration or alcohol abuse).

I truly recommend this documentary by Dorottya and Arun: food for thought for the open minded.