Agent of Happiness
The Gross National Happiness Index of Bhutan is examined in a documentary that ultimately lacks cohesion.
Image courtesy of Dogwoof Releasing
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.
Keeping up the national figure in this way is doubtless both a patriotic and a political exercise and the first part of Agent of Happiness is largely devoted to these interviews by Amber and Guna. What we see makes it evident that the replies can depend on the mood of the interviewee, on their intelligence or even on their faculties (the first interviewee seen is 84 years old and so deaf that he has trouble in hearing the questions). Nevertheless, we do see something of these individuals even if only briefly. Such scenes remind one of a film such as Agnès Varda’s The Gleaners and I (2000) in which she met ordinary people while on her travels but Varda’s film brought far more depth to these encounters.
After a while and without any preparation for it, the film suddenly chooses to feature one person thus met in much greater detail, this being a trans woman named Dechen Selden who works as a bar dancer and scenes with her will recur later and will reveal her close bond with her sympathetic mother. This is not unrewarding material but any connection with the survey which had seemed so central is incidental even if it does invite us to ponder how happy Dechen is. But by now we are also finding considerable footage devoted not to Amber's work but to his first arranged meeting with Sarita Chettri and his subsequent hope of making her his wife. Their rapport is seen to grow after a doubtful start but in time it emerges that she has plans to go to Australia to get a master’s degree. The course of their relationship is followed in some detail and these scenes are shot in a style that is closer to the way in which fictional films are made. Nevertheless, it feels convincing even if some scenes (both here and with Amber and Guna) involve dialogue heard during long shots that thus avoid close-ups and could cover up a certain artificiality.
The fact that Amber eventually wants to travel with Sarita to Australia creates a problem of another kind. Although born in Bhutan he is one of the Nepali people whose citizenship was taken away during his childhood and he is now involved in a long process of claiming citizenship even to the extent of addressing letters to the King of Bhutan. Unless this is granted, he would not have a passport to enable him to go to Australia. This is yet another thread in the film and one that cries out to be examined in more detail since ethnic cleansing issues in Bhutan are significant in that country’s history. But the film simply moves on because it has other figures to introduce including Yangka, a 17-year-old girl with a drunken mother who has to look after her sister, and Tshering, a widower who eventually finds peace in the belief that his wife has been reborn as his grandchild. And, of course, we have those later scenes with Dechen. The last section of the film again stresses the survey with happiness ratings for several of the people that we have met put up on screen. Ultimately one can only feel that there is irony in the latest annual national happiness figure quoted, 93.6% up by just over 3%. Agent of Happiness is undeniably interesting, but one can't help but feel that the assemblage of the various elements goes here, there and everywhere rather than bringing out themes that, however individual, blend into a cohesive whole.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring Amber Kumar Gurung, Guna Raj Kuikel, Sarita Chettri, Dechen Selden, Hemlata Gurung, Yangka Lhamo, Wangmo Lhamo, Karma Wangdi, Tshering, Tashi Tshomo.
Dir Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó, Pro Noémi Veronika Szakonyi, Máté Artur Vincze and Arun Bhattarai, Ph Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó, Ed Péter Sass, Music Ádám Balázs.
BNB Film/Match Frame Productions/The DeNovo Initiative-Dogwoof Releasing.
94 mins. Bhutan/Hungary. 2024. UK Rel: 12 July 2024. Cert. 12A.
