{"id":65494,"date":"2024-07-10T15:00:50","date_gmt":"2024-07-10T06:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/article\/2024\/jul\/10\/agent-of-happiness-review-bhutan-gross-national-happiness"},"modified":"2024-07-10T15:00:50","modified_gmt":"2024-07-10T06:00:50","slug":"agent-of-happiness-review-bhutan-surveyors-attempt-to-analyse-joy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=65494","title":{"rendered":"Agent of Happiness review \u2013 Bhutan surveyors attempt to analyse joy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two assessors ask questions but it\u2019s the detail and nuance that is so compelling in this gently absorbing documentary<\/p>\n<p>In Bhutan, they measure progress not just by GDP, but also <a href=\"https:\/\/ophi.org.uk\/gross-national-happiness#:~:text=The%20phrase%20'gross%20national%20happiness,holistic%20approach%20towards%20notions%20of\">Gross National Happiness<\/a>. This quiet, gently absorbing documentary follows two \u201chappiness agents\u201d as they travel door-to-door, like census workers, collecting data for the government\u2019s happiness survey. There are 148 questions in total. Do you own a tractor? Goats? What about chickens? When was the last time you cried? Do you trust your neighbours? The agent compiles the answers into a table and crunches the data into an individual happiness score of between 0 and 10.<\/p>\n<p>The impossibility of putting a number on happiness is quickly revealed. \u201cHow happy are you?\u201d, one man is asked. \u201cI\u2019m as happy as the number of grains in my rice storage,\u201d he replies. The agent marks that as a 7 out of 10. Then there\u2019s a rich farmer who boorishly boasts of having three wives. He scores his life as a perfect 10, and answers on behalf of wife number one; she\u2019s a 10 for happiness too, he says. If he bothered to look at her, he might notice the tears in her eyes.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/article\/2024\/jul\/10\/agent-of-happiness-review-bhutan-gross-national-happiness\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two assessors ask questions but it\u2019s the detail and nuance that is so compelling in this gently absorbing documentaryIn Bhutan, they measure progress not just by GDP, but also Gross National Happiness. This quiet, gently absorbing documentary follows t&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":603,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1786,71,707,69,78,61,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bhutan","category-culture","category-documentary-films","category-film","category-life-and-style","category-south-and-central-asia","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/603"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65494"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65495,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65494\/revisions\/65495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}