At times amusing and heartfelt, this gentle and comforting Sundance documentary sees local government agents tasked with surveying the Bhutanese on their ‘Happiness Index’.
Review #2,962
Dir. Arun Bhattarai & Dorottya Zurbo
2024 | Bhutan | Documentary | 94min | 1.85:1 | Dzongkha & Nepali
NC16 (passed clean) for some mature content
Cast: –
Plot: Amber is one of the many agents working for the Bhutanese government to measure people’s happiness levels among the remote Himalayan mountains. But will he find his own along the way?
Awards: Nom. for Grand Jury Prize – World Cinema Documentary (Sundance)
International Sales: Cinephil
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Moderate – Happiness; Bhutanese Life
Narrative Style: Straightforward
Pace: Normal
Audience Type: Slightly Mainstream
Viewed: Screener (as part of Singapore Film Society Showcase)
Spoilers: No
It’s no secret that I love Bhutanese cinema after programming Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom (2019) and The Monk and the Gun (2023) for the Singapore Film Society. Here’s another on my radar called Agent of Happiness, which world premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last year.
Unlike the two abovementioned narrative films by Pawo Choyning Dorji, Agent of Happiness is a documentary about Bhutan and its people, as surveyed literally by local government agents tasked to ascertain the much sought-after if highly debatable ‘Happiness Index’.
At times amusing and heartfelt, this piece of comforting non-fiction cinema has funding support from the Hungarian National Film Institute, though it isn’t entirely surprising as one of the co-directors, Dorottya Zurbo, is Hungarian. The other, Arun Bhattarai, is Bhutanese and also serves as the film’s cinematographer.
While Agent of Happiness brings us from one respondent to another in a methodical fashion, the film does shed light on, shall we say, the diversity of circumstances, that befall the Bhutanese.
“In your opinion, how happy are you on a scale of 0 to 10?”
Clearly, not everyone is truly happy, or that they are simply contented with what they have, rather than dwelling on what they don’t possess, tangibly or otherwise.
Be it the multiple wives of a man who rely on each other for support, a transgender woman who hopes for a more fruitful ‘alignment’ in the next life, or even the lead surveyor himself (he has impressive dance moves) who wants to date and get married as soon as possible, everyone harbours hopes and dreams of an even better future.
Accompanied by generous servings of the to-die-for Bhutanese natural landscape and architecture, Agent of Happiness will satiate the continuing curiosity of audiences about the Land of the Thunder Dragon, one strategic question at a time.
Grade: B+
Trailer:
Music:
Eternality Tan 