Jess Rogers
Editor’s Note: Today marks The Matinee return of Jess Rogers as a guest contributor for the site. Jess will be joining in on the Hot Docs coverage again this year. Jess is a smart writer and a great friend, so I’m thrilled to have her back on board this year. – RM
The 4th King of Bhutan declared in 1972 that happiness was more important for the government to focus on than Gross National Product. The new documentary, Happiness, focuses on this idea in a time when we struggle to understand what makes us happy. The filmmakers have focused on a small village in the Himalayas awaiting the arrival of electricity and with it television and internet. They are so excited they have purchased televisions (carried up the mountains precariously on the backs of horses or yaks) years before there will be any electricity to power them.
We follow this societal change through the eyes of a young boy, Peyangki, as his mother decides he should go to the local monastery and become a monk because she can no longer care for him and his siblings without her husband. She works as hard as anyone, spinning thread, weaving fabric, milking the yaks, tending the yaks, but Peyangki will have a better life if he studies to be a monk as his mother cannot pay for him to attend school. However, even monks are susceptible to the temptations of city life and the monastery has become quiet as many monks have left for the city.
Peyangki struggles with his new career, wanting to practice archery with the local boys and going off with his uncle to see the big city and buy another television. We can see the bigger struggles in society represented in the small changes and discoveries by Peyangki as he comes of age.
Throughout the film we see people discussing things that will make them happy. It doesn’t feel like lip service, but a way of talking and planning one’s life around being happy. They’re not planning to be rich or worldly or fashionable, though I doubt those things don’t occur to them, but it’s in the way they discuss wanting a television you can see that the idea is based on happiness.
One of the things that most struck me watching this film was how little it resembled the average documentary. It could easily be mistaken for a feature film of the fictional variety. We see extremely intimate family decisions (deciding to send Peyangki to the monastery), and some very poor choices (carrying a television on the back of a horse was always likely to end poorly). The idea that the filmmakers might stumble upon these moments seems particularly unlikely, but the overall authenticity of Peyangki’s experiences reaffirms that this is nonfiction film making at its finest. At the same time bleak and cold, the beautiful scenery and intruding development draw you into the depths of this seemingly uncomplicated story.
There are a few wise people who suggest that bad things or influences might come from the watching the newly arrived TV, but these people are very eager to try it, to see what might make them happy. I honestly believe that these people would turn off the TV and use it as a stool or table if they found it didn’t make them happy. Though given the film’s final shot of people gazing blankly at the lights of the TV screen, the filmmakers seem dubious that this change is for the better.
HAPPINESS plays Hot Docs 2014 on Sunday night, April 27th – 7:30pm at The Lightbox. It plays again on Saturday, April 28th – 4pm at Isabel Bader, and once more on Sunday, May 4th – 11apm at Lightbox.