‘Agent of Happiness’ Review: A Documentary Searches for True Contentment in Bhutan
20.01.2024 - 08:21
/ variety.com
Siddhant Adlakha By reputation, the Kingdom of Bhutan is the happiest country on Earth, but the “Agent of Happiness” seeks to explore that assertion. The documentary by Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó follows the routine of 40-year-old Amber, one of 75 government workers hired to survey people’s happiness on a mathematical scale, and it details not only the lives of his interviewees, but also that of the agent himself.
It remains, for most part, a withheld, no-frills investigation, whose commentary is light and self-evident. With no “talking heads,” the film plays out more like dramatized docufiction, but eventually, its patchwork of subjects is woven together to create something melodic and meaningful.
Lush shots of the rural mountainside lure us into Bhutan, and into the life of Amber, as he gently clips his mother’s nails before donning his government robes. As he drives through numerous villages with his partner, fellow agent Guna, they listen to classic Bollywood tunes (like “Aye Mere Humsafar,” about fellow travelers) as they casually discuss their personal and romantic lives.
Everything feels ordinary and familiar, at least until the clipboards come out and the duo sits down to ask individual farmers — and eventually, city-dwellers — a series of 148 questions that, to an outsider’s ear, can’t help but sound bizarre. This is all in service of calculating the country’s Gross National Happiness, a percentage point on which Bhutan prides itself.
The criteria ranges from the objective — the number of cows, goats or tractors someone owns, though this hardly applies to a country’s growing urban youth — to the subjective, and even abstract. Do you trust your neighbors? How is your work life balance? What is your sense
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