A Film Review of Agent of Happiness by Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó
Are you happy?
This is a question to which humanity has sought the answer since time immemorial—from parchment to laptop and philosophy to psychology—but to no avail. Yet, in the midst of humanity’s confused and inconclusive verdict on happiness, Bhutan claimed to be able to calculate and quantify this emotion, through their Gross National Happiness (GNH) Index. As ‘Happiness Agents’ armed with a checklist make their way through the quiet, peaceful neighbourhoods of Bhutan, co-directors Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó follow the journey of one such agent.
Agent of Happiness trails 40-year-old Amber Kumar Gurung, who dons his government robes before setting out to survey the citizens of Bhutan with his fellow agent, Guna. As they drive through lush green villages where nature reigns supreme and nostalgic Bollywood tunes play on the speakers, one wonders if this is the true meaning of happiness—after all, who wouldn’t be excited at the prospect of no traffic or honking, no deadlines to meet, and clean, blue skies dotted with pristine white clouds? Yet, it is soon made clear how even in such picturesque environments, all is not necessarily well.
As the agents sit down to interview farmers, we hear a range of questions—some more objective, such as the number of cattle in their possession, while others more subjective, such as: do you trust your neighbours? what is your sense of karma? how is your work-life balance? are you happy?
Onscreen, none of the respondents feels compelled to provide a direct answer; they take their own sweet time to reply, many drifting off into completely unrelated tangents altogether. And what of the interviewer? Given how much pride Bhutan takes in claiming to be the happiest nation in the world by way of having an official metric to measure happiness, one might expect their happiness agents to be robotic, hurried men and women who haven’t the time or the patience to sit and converse with their people, and are only concerned with the happiness score they must give each interviewee. However, neither does Amber rush the interview process nor does he appear to treat this like some exalted national duty; for him, it is a regular job like any other.
What begins as a procedural documentary on the Bhutanese state’s gaze on the happiness of its people, quickly shifts into one that delves deeper into the lived realities of those who must contribute to the happiness index. The film focuses on individual respondents and gives them control over the narratives of their own lives, regardless of their happiness score. For instance, a transgender bar dancer, Dechen, to whom Amber’s questions barely apply, talks frankly of her family history and a bleak view of the future. (She scores the lowest happiness score in the film, a dismal 3 points.) A similar narrative agency is offered to numerous other women in unique circumstances, whether three co-wives to a common husband or a teenage girl whose insecurities are amplified through her TikTok feed. These are components of the survey that cannot be captured under its neat matrix. Bhattarai and Zurbó complement the portrayal of these complex emotions with aesthetically pleasing images of a lush and beautiful Bhutan, as if to contrast the serenity of the hills with the confusion and sadness of the people who inhabit them.
At one point, Amber comes across a rich farmer boorishly boasting about his three wives. Unsurprisingly, his answers win him a perfect score of 10. After all, with three wives looking after his every little need, anything lower would be bewildering. He even answers for one of his wives, claiming her to be a perfect 10 too. However, as the camera pans to her, we see her eyes glistening with tears threatening to roll down her rosy cheeks any second. We can imagine what her relationship with her husband would be like. On the other hand, she also reveals privately how all three co-wives are as close as sisters and how she can’t imagine her life without them. Together, they bond over ribbing about their husband: “His belly got big,” says one. “His ass shrank, though,” jokes another. Yet, despite the good, hearty laugh that ensues, there is a sense of underlying gloom that hangs in the air over them, an atmosphere with such a sorrowful undercurrent, that it spills over from screen to audience.
Towards the end of the film, Amber’s own story is highlighted, and a special bond develops between the audience and this surveyor. Suddenly, we find the plot flipped on its head—the agent has now become the interviewee, and the filmmakers have become the agents of happiness! In these conversations, Amber’s struggles with his mental health are brought to the fore, compounded by his anxiety about his Bhutanese citizenship status given his Nepali ethnicity. With this, the film draws our attention to a crucial factor determining people’s lives— happiness is contingent not only on one’s immediate surroundings and cultural contexts, but even more fundamentally on the workings of politics and bureaucracy. A powerful message is conveyed here, underlining how even if one may not be interested in the machinations of politics, politics is always interested in the lives of every human being. Happiness is thus inherently political at its core. A gentle soul looking for a wife and longing for a Bhutanese passport, Amber lives on to search for his own happy ending.
Ultimately Agent of Happiness manages to cover the intimate, the personal, and the unsaid moments of people’s lives in the ‘Kingdom of Happiness’. By the end of the film, it is very apparent that all along, it has been least bothered about shedding light on the use of the GNH index for boosting Bhutan’s image on the international stage, or even investigating how this index is utilised by the government to formulate policies to better satisfy its people. Rather, the film has ended up uncovering how difficult to quantify happiness is. And even as it tracks the government’s best efforts at measuring citizen happiness, it leaves the viewer to decide for themselves whether this is a gimmicky stunt, or a project that manages to achieve its goals.
–Written by Samagra Thakur, 1st year, B.A. Hons. Journalism and Media Studies